School is leading the way

The opening of Christ the Sower ecumenical school in the Watling Valley area of Milton Keynes brings together many aspects of the church’s visions for this fast growing city. Here, school chaplain Pauline Barnes talks of her joy at being part of this forward-looking school.

‘Is that a full-time job?’ people tentatively ask when they find out I’m a chaplain at a primary school. Perhaps followed by, ‘but where’s your church?’ After nearly two years, the answer is ‘Yes, it is a full time job and I don’t have a church, I’m based at the school.’

This is, of course, not your average school. Christ the Sower is a new voluntary-aided primary school on Milton Keynes’ burgeoning west flank. When the Diocese of Oxford accepted the offer of a site for a church school over 30 years ago, I wonder if they realised that it would be in a parish which contained nearly a quarter of the population of Milton Keynes.  Or that it would be home to people from all round the globe. Or that most people would no longer know or care about church.

What they did always realise was that Milton Keynes was committed to ecumenical working. So this school became not ‘CofE.’ but ecumenical, supported by and an integral part of the local ecumenical parish.

Working with the school is an opportunity to ‘do church’ in a different way. My post is paid for by the United Reformed Church, using funds set aside for experiments outside the usual congregational pattern. Our aim is to link school and community with expressions of faith and spirituality that make sense in a society that is both multi-faith and wary of faith.  We want to be more than tolerant of non-Christian faiths; we want to be welcoming and willing to learn from them. As a small example, we were delighted that a Muslim led our collective worship in the first week of Ramadan, helping us to appreciate new dimensions of our theme ‘feasting and fasting’. 

At the heart of the school we have a dedicated ‘soul space’. It’s a reminder that there are values beyond the material and the utilitarian – and it’s a great place to chill, to have a quiet talk with God, or to comfort each other when the going gets tough.

By the time we have grown to our maximum capacity we’ll be touching the lives of nearly 500 children and their families at any one time.  That’s not just through the chaplain and the churches, but through the staff who minister in their own ways and from their own position on the spectrum of faith, and through practical initiatives with the local and wider community. ‘But where’s your church?’ people may still ask.  I hope the answer to that will be obvious.