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church : revd jo's letter : june 2006 added 16/05/06 There is a story about a Bishop’s visit to a parish church. Introduced to a very long-serving Churchwarden, the Bishop said brightly, ‘Well, Fred, you must have seen a lot of changes in your years here.’ ‘Yes,’ replied Fred, ‘and I’ve put a stop to every one of them.’ We’re all resistant to change. It’s so much easier to jog along as we always have, and to see any change as a threat to our stability. But without change, we can’t grow, and if we don’t grow as a church, we can only decline. The important thing is to keep a balance of old and new, of familiar and less familiar. One of the familiar practices of the church is Baptism, and it is a constant delight to me to have so many enquiries about this. In June we shall baptise three little girls; on the 11th, at Careby, Lydia Rose, daughter of Ruth and Roger, and on the 25th, at Castle Bytham, Amy Grace, daughter of Emily and Ian Rule, and Paige Catherine, daughter of Deborah and Ricky Leverseidge. Sadly, funerals, too, are familiar, and we remember in our prayers Susan Howitt, whose funeral took place at Grantham on April 27th, and her parents in their loss. A recent innovation has been the Bythams School Spring Service, which took place at Little Bytham on May 4th. It was wonderful to see the church filled with children and parents, and to hear the children sing with such enthusiasm. The instrumentalists, trained by Victoria Worthington, gave us a splendid rendition of ‘Go down, Moses’, and as the adults enjoyed the refreshments afterwards, the churchyard became alive with happy children, playing is the evening sunshine. We really felt that the church was where it belongs, at the very heart of the community. Down the ages, churches have commemorated the saints to whom they are dedicated, and we have two Patronal Festivals in the next few weeks. June 8th is the feast of Saints Medardus and Gildardus, to whom Little Bytham church is dedicated. We shall have a special service at 7.00pm, followed by refreshments. Creeton church is dedicated to St Peter, whose feast day is June 29th. We are transferring this to the following Sunday, July 2nd, when we shall have a special Evensong and, hopefully, follow this with a glass of wine in the evening sunshine. And I suppose the most familiar activity of the church is fundraising. You will read elsewhere a letter from a resident asking for the offer of your time and talents in maintaining Castle Bytham church. The building has stood at the heart of the village for hundreds of years, witnessing baptisms, marriages and funerals, as it continues to do today. But ancient buildings are very expensive to maintain, and we do need help, as we do at Little Bytham, Creeton and Careby, to do this. That help need not be financial; skills and talents are equally valuable. So if we are to continue to offer the familiar, and to introduce the less familiar, we need you. Whether you worship in the churches or not, they are your churches – part of your inheritance and part of the fabric of village life. With every blessing, Jo |
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