Quiet Spaces Still Places

Friday 1st April 2005

Quiet	Still	Quiet	Still	Quiet	Still	Quiet
Still Places	Quiet Spaces	Still Places	Quiet Spaces	Still Places	Quiet Spaces	Still Places
Spaces	Places	Spaces	Places	Spaces	Places	Spac

Up-dated May 2007

The second page outlines suggestions of what you might do in your church.

The material on these pages comes from the experience of people who have a care for a prayerful quiet place, often a small village church.  They  want to share with others what their often ancient and peaceful church building has to offer. 

  Faith    Building   Faith   Building   Faith    Building   Faith    Building  Faith    Building  

Our hope is that you will be encouraged to add to the material here by telling us what you are already doing, or are considering doing, in your church to welcome visitors, pilgrims and tourists.  
It would be valuable too to know how you react to the material….what might be added…what might be thought about……what is less helpful…..and so on.

The Background

About a year ago there was an informal gathering from about 20 churches from across the diocese.  Everyone there was aware of visitors finding their way to their churches during the week and out of service times.  All were seeking to explore what might be done, in their particular situation, to meet the needs of their "extended church". 

The gathering produced the following list of issues, concerns and ideas to try.  As far as possible, the list has been written in the words of those present and arising from their direct experience.
Does anything in this list provoke the reaction "We could do that!" or  "We could add to that list….." or "If only they knew about our difficulties…..

1. We've moved our church notice board to make it more visible
2. We have to be sensitive to the parking of cars which easily block the narrow street
   
3. We try to keep our building uncluttered to signal a place of peace
   
4. We have begun to think about providing helps for people to pray
   
5. An open door is very important but we find this difficult to do in this day and age
6. Our old church guide is out of date and we need a new one - shorter and more "multi-user friendly".
7. We have to be realistic about what our particular place provides.  We have left a map to get people to the local eating places and toilets.
8. We are on a natural tourists trail so people can easily find us.  We have literature in our church of interesting places in the area.  We are thinking about a church trail.
9. We have put up a board for prayers to be left but we feel we could do more.
10. We have talked about why people come to our church-we know they come (info. from the visitors book):
    
    • seeking the registers/graveyard
    • the architecture draws them
    • pointed by another interesting place in the area
    • with a desire for quiet to sort out a problem, searching for meaning, to pray
11. We have made a corner of the church a place where people can sit and reflect in a less open space.  We have put some inexpensive aids to prayer there which people can take away.
    
12. Our church porch has information about local clergy, councillors and the Samaritans.  Recently we have begun to look into one or two useful websites to recommend.

Please be in touch at spidir@oxford.anglican.org

• To add your voice to this list. [SEE BELOW for responses]
• To invite a facilitator to meet with the PCC or some other group to discuss possibilities

Stones      Holy      Stones     Living   Stones    Holy   Stones   Living     Stones     Holy   Stones     Living    Stones      Holy      Stones    Living  Stones    Holy    Stones      Holy   

Further pages are in preparation to give help with taking ideas forward, with resourcing pastoral and spiritual needs, and with approaches to designing a "multi-user friendly" church guide.  Ideas and experience around these or other topics would be valued.  Contact spidir@oxford.anglican.org

Voices responding:

1. I read about Tourist Boxes in Country Way.  A box is left in the church porch which has a bible, details about the church, prayer cards,details of the nearest loos and pubs etc .  I thought it was a very good idea and is also one solution to untidiness problems.     Posted 7/04/05
2. Five more churches wish to be involved in developing this aspect of their mission and ministry.   Posted16/04/05
3. St Mary’s is tucked away in a quiet backwater.  An ancient 13C stone church with very little space.  BUT we are just embarking on a small building work which will enlarge the vestry to include a toilet and a kitchenette and a space for meeting.The place around the church is tranquil and beautiful and is much used by walkers and riders.  It has long been my vision for St Mary’s to become a place of reflection and creation and your new initiative could be a starting point.  Please give me more details or come and see us.    Posted  9/5/05
4. We are in a lovely area, much visited by ramblers etc, and also by pilgrims seeking rest, refreshment, and renewal. The churches  - and the pubs - play a vital part in this. We want to make the most of the opportunities involved.   Posted  15/5/05
5. Thanks for this. I am interested as I have been mulling around for some time how we can minister to the many visitors we get to our 5 churches.    Posted 17/5/05
6. There was general assent to the idea, and a suggestion that
   a sign be placed outside the gate of St Michael's. What I will do is to remind myself of the person's reflections to came to the first conference, and then see what I can do to hand the dossier on to someone else. This would be with a view to extending the discussion across the four
   churches.
   Meanwhile, if you look at our four "A Church Near You" pages, you will
   see references that may be relevant. For example, the fact that our
   churches are open for prayer and meditation is mentioned. I have
   inserted an ongoing item for Great Tew's churchyard, which having been
   rescued from wilderness is now on its way to becoming a lovely Living
   Churchyard. The description of St Michael's contains the words:
   
       Our roof project is now complete except for some tidying up of the
       site, and St Michael's is once more the quiet place it has been.
       This is an ideal place for prayer and meditation, as well as for
       casual visits. It is a lovely church in which to sit and enjoy silence.
   
   The entry about Nether Worton says:
   
       Officially a chapel, St James is a beautiful and lovingly cared for
       church in a small village tucked into a valley. The church is open
       for prayer and meditation. Ideal for silent sitting and centering
       prayer.
   
   I trust that this does give some clear notion of this kind of prayer
   resource that we offer.  Posted 31/05/05
7. We are talking about putting up a clearer sign to our church which is definitely a holy place and visited by people.   But we are a divided church over what constitutes "mission".  Some people have an up-front, outreach approach while others want to be more contemplative about this.   The QuietSpacesStillPlaces project might draw the church together.  The material on the website certainly will support the kinds of conversation which we need.   Posted 28/06/05
8. In conversation ....."It's about getting a sense that we have a mission to people who come to us that we don't see."    Posted  10/07/05
9. We have exactly the kind of church you mention:  small, old, beautiful and peaceful.   It is kept open, and the visitors' book records the appreciation of this, and the effect it has.   There's a simple prayer leaflet for visitors, and all-age explanations of the medieval wall-paintings, and provided a small spiritual reading bookshelf/library.   It is common practice among those married in the church (and who receive a wedding candle) to come back on their anniversary.   Posted 8/08/05
10. This project has given us the impetus to re-visit our church guide which is very dull and an up-date is very overdue.   Posted 6/09/05
11. We certainly should do something about our displays in church which are tatty and detract from its prayerful atmosphere.   1/10/05
12. As the season of visitors comes upon us we realise that material to help people make more of their stroll round our church environs is something we really must get on to.   3/5/06
13. I'd like to meet up because we are wanting to put together a prayer walk in the environs of our church 16/9/06

14. We have opened the door of St. Thomas' Church, Simpson on a Tuesday afternoon in preparation for full time opening.  We have a lot to complete with proposing a re-ordering of the church interior to make the area more flexible.....  The rest of the churches in the parish are also looking at what we are doing and hope to draw in other interested 'churches' from across Milton Keynes.    3/12/06
    

Open for You – Review December 2006

I approached Paul Bond’s book Open for You, somewhat unenthusiastically, in spite of its attractive cover, thinking, “Not another book to add to the plethora of stuff put out recently to help us make more of our church buildings; what more can possibly be written about it?”  How wrong could I have been?!

The clue lies in its sub-title “The Church, the Visitor and the Gospel”.  This book unashameably aims to use the tool of our historic church buildings to connect with Christian faith – and is full of good ideas about how to do this.

The style is easy and accessible.  Many pages have line drawings which use humour to punch home the issues, realities, challenges and opportunities which our churches are facing today.  The drawings alone could well be used to stimulate a particularly dour PCC or group of Churchwardens to see beyond the problems and to plan something new.

There are useful questions at the end of each chapter to draw people into purposeful reflection and then into planning.   They have clearly come from a person of wide experience.  Until recently Paul served as one of the ministers in the team of the eight rural parishes which make up the Ray Valley benefice in the Dorchester Area.  He was also working as the National Liason officer of the Churches Tourism Association.

His thorough research has yielded eleven pages of resources which are attractively laid out and grouped for easy reference.   Roman Catholic, Free Church and the full spectrum within Anglicanism are all represented and resources for children and young people are also included.   The range of websites for further exploration is noteworthy and Jim Cotter’s website www.smallpilgrimplaces.org.uk could well be added as well as our own www.oxford.anglican.org/QuietSpacesStillPlaces .

An otherwise splendid handbook, packed with useful ideas and which can be dipped into anywhere, has within it just one small blemish for me - an almost throw-away remark towards the end of the book in the section which is exploring contemporary spirituality.  He writes “the vague spirituality of an eastern shrine”, even taking account of the context in which he uses it, seems to indicate a lack of understanding of the richness and depth of eastern spirituality at a time when there is such need for increasing inter-faith understanding.  By the same token, it would be very easy for example for the uninitiated to take away the idea that one of the central rituals of the Christian church is cannibalistic!  The challenge is ours – both to educate ourselves if we share a vagueness about the spirituality of the other world faiths, and also to see to it that visitors to our churches are not left with similar vagueness.  There is a very useful section with suggestions of how to write short explanations on card or leaflet about the main church furnishings and why they are there.

A long section of further ideas, towards the end of the book, is cleverly contrived to sum up what has been explored in greater detail earlier on while producing further “How to do it” material.  If this book provokes in you the response  “We could do that…or else, that wouldn’t work!  (So long as it isn’t all “that wouldn’t work”!)  it will have begun to do its job.  It costs £14.99 to buy…money well spent.

Canon Barbara Doubtfire who focuses the Quiet Spaces Still Places project within the diocese.  The project aims to stimulate the prayerful dimension of our church buildings and to encourage the contemporary seeker in the spiritual journey.