Lack of parking, a chance remark and a Kairos moment

Tucked away in the south-east corner of Cumbria, on the border with Yorkshire and Lancashire, lies the small market town of Kirkby Lonsdale.  It is the largest community in an Anglican parish of eight churches serving the town and the surrounding villages.  There has been a long history of good ecumenical relations in the town between the ministers and members of St Joseph’s (the Roman Catholic Church), St Mary’s and Kirkby Lonsdale Methodist Church (KLMC).  Quakers are the fourth member of the local Christians Together in Lunesdale group.

Around 7 years ago, the parish began to think about future paid ministry.  There was a desire for a team that had the skills of both traditional priestly ministry and the skills, energy and space for pioneering work, in order to help shape and lay foundations for the church of the future.  This is what happened.

The parish began to explore the appointment of a house-for-duty or half-time priest.  Lack of parking near the churches is a key factor in the story at this point because it meant that Wendy Thornton, the Methodist minister, would park at the Rectory when she was talking services at KLMC.  We would frequently chat after taking our respective services and one Sunday morning she made an off-the-cuff remark about the part-time post; ‘Perhaps I should apply’.  The rest is history, as they say.  It was a Kairos moment because the local Methodist Circuit was just beginning a review of staffing.  This provided the opportunity to imagine a jointly funded post, where Wendy’s ministry would be half time in the circuit, and half time in the parish, enabling the geography of the two halves of her ministry to overlap.  With the support and encouragement of the leaders of both denominations this is what happened.  Wendy was employed by the circuit and licensed as a team vicar in the parish.  She lives in the vicarage in Kirkby Lonsdale next to the rectory, and has her own parking!.

It has been hugely successful both in terms of proving ecumenical, collaborative leadership, and in growing a shared outward-looking vision that the churches and their surroundings are creatively and sustainably utilised for the benefit of the local community, visitors and the Ministry and Mission of the churches.  In just about every aspect we operate as ‘The Church in and around Kirkby Lonsdale’.  The profile, and involvement of the church on the life of the town has grown considerably as a consequence.

At the same time that we were looking into the possibility of Wendy’s appointment we continued to think about the pioneering.  It was impossible to see how this could be financed by any of the churches on their own, and to do this would go against our ecumenical ethos.  The church councils gave a small ecumenical group the task of prayerfully discerning the possibility and practically of some sort of ‘pioneer’ appointment, and sketching out what the role might be in our context.  The result was ‘The Family Project’ with the aim of helping families with children in our communities discover more of God and God’s purpose for their lives.  With funding in places from the churches, individuals and grants, we set about recruiting a ‘Family Project Leader’ (deliberately not going down the route of seeking a ‘children and family worker’ because the vision was to involve the whole church in the project, rather than create the situation where people would look to the ‘worker’ to do it on their behalf).  Lol Wood was appointed in September 2017 and the project is now at the very heart of everything we do.  Funding has just been secured for a further for years, including some grant providers offering a repeated grant; this rarely happens and is a good indication of the success and value given to the project.  The key in all of this is that none of our churches could have done it on their own, and none would want to do it one their own. 

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