CSI Camberwick Green, not Camberwell Green

Picture the scene: a small, rural school, Sunday morning in autumn. A small group of people turn up wearing woolly hats pulled over their ears. First one, then another vaults over the walls of the school playground. Another passes a sledgehammer over the wall. Children shout encouragement to the people who are now inside school grounds. Phone the police? No... just some parents of kids who attend that school turning up at the weekend to install some large new piece of play equipment (a wooden tractor and trailer, since you ask) bought by the parents' association. They were offered entrance to the school grounds via a door or gate but declined. It is obviously far more fun to vault over the walls (then have your kids hurled over after you). I used to live in one of the more crime-ridden, "stabbier" parts of South London and can imagine how things might have played out had parents vaulted their way into a playground at the weekend armed with sledgehammers. Much more fun to be had in villages, y'know.

Rural ministry

Rural ministry is where:

• Small is often not only beautiful but a 'given'.
• The church is often the Last Public Service Provider Standing.
• Being curators of an ancient monument (the church building) is hard to see as an honour, rather than a bottomless pit of time, money and effort at times.
• The prayerful stillness (if seldom silence) of the church building reminds you that its purpose is as a place to be sent out from as much as to gather with others in.
• Incognito travel is never possible.
• Opportunity is there to serve the community, but there are possibly as many agendas for how this is to be done as there are members of the congregation.
• A church can make a significant impact on its community, especially with other services being more distant.
• The church buildings somehow still feel as though they truly belong to the community - even to those who never pop in.
• Keeping the congregation warm can cost more than your parish share.
• The community served by a church probably has a small voice on its own, but our networks can amplify them to make their needs heard, if we are able to work co-operatively internally and externally.
• Ancient stones are a witness in themselves.
• We are often the custodians of the village's story through our records and our continuity.
• Loving our neighbours is a necessity as well as a Gospel imperative: the village is your peer group and you're stuck with each other.

Please do add to this very partial list of my ruminations with your own thoughts...