Alleluia! Christ is risen.

At last week’s Ministry Team meeting, we reflected on what a great Easter celebration we’ve had across the Benefice.  From the Holy Week Messy Church, at which there were over 80 people, to the dramatized ascent to St Michael’s at Brentor, which drew over 200; from the dawn service on the Pimple, where Christians from across the town’s churches gathered together to celebrate Easter, to wonderful children’s service at Gulworthy; and from the Stations of the Cross in Tavistock to the choir singing the ‘Alleluia Chorus’.

The Feast of the Resurrection of the Lord, which we celebrate now at Easter, is the greatest and also the oldest of Christian feasts.  Christians regularly aver that ‘Jesus is alive’ and that he lives in us.  These are truths that weave through our liturgy, our theology and our songs, but what does it mean for us in our day-to-day lives?

Someone commented to me recently, “We’re not very good at being Easter people.”  I think I know what they mean.  If the central truth of our faith – that Jesus was dead, as dead as can be, and then, three days later, by the power of God, was alive again – is true for us, one might think that this ought to radically change the way we live our lives.  It certainly did for those first disciples!  I wonder if the reason it doesn’t is because we’re missing a key bit.

In Genesis 2 we read that God fashioned human beings from the dust of the earth.  Then he breathed into their nostrils a breath of life, and it was at this point that we became living beings (Genesis 2.7) the way God intended us to be.  Then, in Genesis 3.19, one of the consequences of human disobedience is that we are to return to the dust.  It is as though we are no longer capable of containing the full life God wanted for us.

Throughout the Scriptures we read of many occasions where the Spirit touches the lives of people, the prophets and so forth, but it is always a momentary thing.  However, when we look at the baptism of Jesus, we find that the Holy Spirit descended on him and remained on him.  Then, if we read the Gospels closely, we will note how often the evangelists tell us about Jesus being filled with the Holy Spirit.

One of the key passages in the whole Bible is found in John 20.21-23 when Jesus first appears to the disciples.  ‘”As the Father sent me, so I am sending you.” After saying this he breathed on them and said, “Receive the Holy Spirit.”’  In breathing the Holy Spirit into the disciples, Jesus, through whom all things were created (see John 1) was recreating human beings again in the image of God.  This is what needs to happen in our lives if we are to be “Easter people”.  Without God the Holy Spirit living in us, we cannot enter into the ‘fullness of life’ that Jesus said was the purpose he came (see John 10.10).

So, as we continue to celebrate Easter and move towards Pentecost, let us pray that the Father will send the Holy Spirit upon each one of us, that we might come fully alive as Easter people – ‘If anyone loves me they will keep my word, and my Father will love them, and we shall come to them and make our home with them’ (John 14.23).

Father Matt

(Taken from my introduction to the APCM Report)

It is my privilege to introduce the Annual Report on the life of Tavistock Parish Church during 2022, my first Annual Report as Incumbent.  In doing so, I invite you to call to mind Bishop Robert’s vision for the Diocese; summed up in the three key tasks – to grow in prayer, to make disciples and to serve the people of Devon with joy.

There has been a lot to celebrate, to give thanks for and to be encouraged by over the last year.  Tavistock Parish Church remains a busy place that is, at the same time, an oasis of peace in the middle of the town.  It is at the centre of the community and worship is offered there every day of the year.  The reports that follow give an indication of the large number of people who contribute to making the church such a lively and engaged community.

The year began with the Benefice still in interregnum and a lot of people hard at work, living out their faith in a host of ways.  The year ended with an incumbent in post, and a lot of people hard at work, living out their faith in a host of ways.  I hope you will forgive the rhetoric, but that is the nature of the life of the church.  Actually, as we reach the end of the year, across the Benefice there are signs that, as church communities, we are starting to ‘go up through the gears’ following an interregnum which was probably three months longer than all parties would have liked.  We are starting to look at how we can be effective in witnessing to the Good News of Jesus Christ in this generation and there is a sense of excitement.

I was licensed as the Priest-in-Charge on the Feast of St Matthew, 21^st September.  However, on 8^th September the nation had received the news of the death of Her Late Majesty, Queen Elizabeth II.  The day before that, I had received a telephone call from the Archdeacon of Plymouth, who said, ‘with regard to your licensing, all bets are off, crack on!’  We immediately convened a meeting of the Ministry Team and the Churchwardens to coordinate our response, as a Benefice, to the imminent death of Queen Elizabeth II.  Once the sad news was confirmed, our churches were opened in very short order, with candles and books of remembrance, services were organised, flags were half-masted and so forth.  At St Eustachius’, the first people arrived to pay their respects within half-an-hour of the announcement and the church then remained open for the whole period of national mourning.  The following week, the church hosted one of the four civic services of commemoration for Devon.

As well as the regular drum-beat of worship throughout the Church Year, the Ministry Team has continued to lead the occasional offices (i.e. baptisms, weddings and funerals), along with a range of other services, schools, harvest, civic and remembrance, to name but a few.  Funerals continued apace, as did baptisms.  Once again, there were very few weddings in 2022, although, towards the end of the year, there were signs that those numbers might be increasing again, post pandemic.  My thanks go to all those who help lead Morning Prayer and Evening Prayer, Monday to Saturday, week in week out.  Often they are on their own, occasionally one or two might join them, but those individuals have been there faithfully, praying on behalf of us all and for us all.

Music always plays an important part in the life and worship of St Eustachius’ and this year was no exception.  As well as concerts and another fantastic festival given by the Exon Singers, the choir went to Exeter Cathedral to sing as part of the St Boniface Festival, a real highlight.  With the departure in September of Scott Angell, who left to train for ordination, and finances not allowing for the recruitment of a new Director of Music, Andrew Lundie kindly offered to step in to help lead the choir and for that he has my grateful thanks.  I also congratulate Mary Mazur-Park on her appointment as our Organist, from the beginning of January 2023.

Our ministry to children, young people and their families has continued to be a strength of the now and a source of hope for the future.  The numbers taking part in Messy Church and/or coming to our parent and toddler group, Little Deers, are really encouraging.  The Sunday Vestry Group continues to nurture the faith of our children.  Open the Book continues to take the Gospel into our schools in such an attractive way and, of course, our Ministry Team has continued to support the schools with Collective Worship (assemblies) and with their festival services in church.  On behalf of us all, I would like to thank Sarah Pendle, The Rev’d Rosie Illingworth, Maryjane Traber and all those who work so hard in this vital area of ministry.

Another strength of the church over the last year has been our large Pastoral Care Team, which quietly works to share God’s love with so many people who are sick, housebound or going through difficult times for one reason or another – visiting, taking Holy Communion or simply keeping in touch by telephone.  For a number of years now, we have been blessed to have had Elizabeth Maslen to lead and coordinate this important area of ministry.  As she now hands over the baton to Diana McDowell, I would like to thank her for the utter dedication, love and wisdom with which she has exercised this ministry in our midst.

The Friendly Friday fellowship morning is yet another aspect of the life of the church which should be mentioned here.  My thanks go to Barbara Miller and all the wonderful helpers who make Friday mornings a place of such warmth and hospitality.  The welcome that so many people find here week by week might remind us of Jesus’ parable of the mustard seed (see Mark 4).  And thanks to vision of the Friendly Friday team, their hard work in raising funds and with the generous support of The Ven Nick Shutt, Archdeacon of Plymouth, the kitchen facilities in Dora’s Cupboard were renovated during the first part of 2023.

Thinking about hospitality and welcome, the cost of living crisis that has engulfed the country, coupled with soaring energy costs, led to many churches throughout Britain taking part in an initiative broadly termed warm spaces.  Thousands of buildings, including churches and church halls, started being opened and refreshments and meals provided, along with hospitality and fellowship, to support those who cannot afford to heat their homes or who, for a variety of reasons, value the opportunity to be with others.  We, as a church, decided to set aside Mondays to provide such a space, called Warm Welcome.  In an example of what is sometimes called God-incidence, it turned out that four other churches in Tavistock had all planned, without consultation with one another, to do the same thing, on five different days.  So, there has been somewhere for people to go from Monday to Friday.

The work of the Churchwardens during an interregnum is significant and I would, therefore, like to thank Graham and Mary Whalley, for their tremendous hard work and commitment.  Not only have they had all the behind-the-scenes work to do, they have also continued to take an active role in our regular worship, to verge for weddings and funerals and to be there to welcome people into church for concerts.

The Parish Office continued to be staffed between 10am and 12 noon and I would like to thank Jo Barton, our Administrator, for her careful management of the diary, Parish Centre bookings and much else besides.  I would also like to thank Rachel Toms for her work keeping both the Parish Centre and the church looking clean and tidy.

Tavistock, along with the other parishes in our Benefice, has continued to play its part in the life of the Deanery this year, regularly hosting Deanery Synod at the Parish Centre.  I would like to thank The Rev’d Andy Atkins who, as Rural Dean for most of the year has supported this parish tremendously, offering advice and encouragement during the interregnum.

Our relationship with the other Christian churches in the town and the wider area, through TACT, has continued to be a source of mutual encouragement and joyful fellowship.  The annual unity service, the Lent Lunches and the Easter services were all great opportunities to worship together and to witness together to God’s transforming love.

Towards the end of 2022, the Finance Committee, ably led by James Teague and supported by Ann Townsend, did a tremendous amount of work to address the deficit in our budget for 2023.  Thanks to their hard work, the PCC was able to approve a budget which will, by the grace of God, and in conjunction with a review of our financial procedures to be carried out in early 2023, mean that our financial position looked much clearer by the end of this year.  However, in the light of the deficit, a decision was made at the November PCC meeting to put the Galley & Toilets project on hold.  The reasons for the decision were that it is not possible to apply for grants while running deficit and that, given the financial situation facing the country, it was not the right time to approach local businesses for contributions.

The hard work of our Ministry Team over the last year has been remarkable and my heartfelt thanks go to each of them.  It was a real bonus when I took on the role as Priest-in-Charge, to know that there was such a great team in place already.  It was then a great joy, in my first week in post, to attend the licensing of Amanda Harris as a Licensed Lay Minister for the Benefice at Exeter Cathedral on 1^st October.

My thanks go to John Rea for his support and wise counsel as Vice-Chair of the PCC, to Anne Johnson for her work as Chair of the Friends of St Eustachius’, and to Pat Morrison and all those on the Friends of St Eustachius’ Committee who organised another hugely successful Christmas Tree Festival in December.  Likewise, I am hugely grateful to Christine Everitt, the Secretary of the PCC, without whose organisational gifts, we would be in a pickle; to our Tower Captain, George Mudge, and our bell ringers; to Peter Rowan, both for his role as Parish Giving Officer and his work with the sound system and livestreaming of services; and to Nick Clark and the Fabric Team, whose diligence and hard work keeps our buildings in good shape; to Martin Pendle for managing our website, producing the parish magazine and leading the Project 700 team; to Rita Bilverstone for her work as Parish Safeguarding Rep; to Nichola Heathman, our Sacristan; to Pam Hunter for organising the altar team; to Rev’d Sue Tucker for leading the bereavement group; to those who serve as foundation governors in our schools; to our stewards, Holy Dusters, brass cleaners, readers, intercessors, servers, chalice assistants, and to each and every one of you.  It is worth bearing in mind St Paul’s famous analogy of the church as a body, made up of different parts, all of which are vital for the functioning of the whole.  Please forgive me for not being able to mention everyone by name but, to everyone:  thank you!

To finish, I would like to draw your attention back to the second task in Bishop Robert’s vision for the Diocese, to make disciples.  This is what we must be about as we go forward now into a new year.  Everything we do must either directly or indirectly be in support of this aim because, in the words of the German theologian and martyr, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, ‘the church is only truly the church, when it is so for others’ – so let us be bold to share the Good News!

Your brother in Christ,

Father Matt

You are the people of God; he loved you and chose you for his own.  So then, you must clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience. Be tolerant with one another and forgive one another whenever any of you has a complaint against someone else. You must forgive one another just as the Lord has forgiven you. And to all these qualities add love, which binds all things together in perfect unity.

Colossians 3.12-15

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ,

Greetings on the Feast of Michael and All Angels!

I would like to start by thanking you all for the wonderful welcome we have received since moving into the Vicarage at the beginning of August.  Thank you to those who sent cards and flowers, thank you to those who gave financially to help us get the place habitable again, and thank you to those who gave so generously of their time to help us clean, paint or reclaim the garden from the wilderness.  I know that Jo, Bethan and Bartholomew would agree that we couldn’t have wished for a warmer welcome.

Thank you also to everyone across the three parishes who has worked so hard over the last three weeks.  I know that you work hard all the time and, further, that you have had to work harder still during the interregnum.  However, after that tea-time when the news broke of our Late Queen’s death, there was yet more to be done.  Within an hour of the news, our churches were open, with the Books of Condolence flanked by candles, flowers and an official photo of Her Late Majesty.  Certainly in St Eustachius, the first people arrived to pay their respects and light a candle within half-an-hour.  During the following week so many of us were involved in preparing services, ringing bells, ensuring supplies of candles were topped up and a range of other background jobs.  Our services of commemoration were done brilliantly, culminating in the civic service for West Devon in Tavistock.  Then, without a pause for breath, it was straight into preparations for the licensing service and the Benefice Eucharist, both of which were cracking occasions.

On the back of all this, it is perhaps unsurprising that that lots of us are tired.  And we are, after all, coming towards the end of the (Church) year, too.  The season of remembering is just over the horizon – with All Saints’ Day, All Souls Day and Remembrance Sunday – and then comes Advent Sunday and the start of a new year.  So, maybe now is a time for us to collectively draw breath, to hit the ‘pause’ button and to spend some time praying and listening to the Lord, asking him to give us a vision for the year ahead.  We only have a finite amount of energy, time and resources and I believe we need to focus those things where they are going to make the most difference.

At my licensing, Bishop Robert reminded us of the three mission priorities of the Diocese, notably to grow in prayer, to serve the people of Devon with joy (those last two words being essential) and to make new disciples.  I sense that our vision for this team will flow out of and reflect those three priorities, with a focus on making new disciples.  When Jesus called Matthew, the tax collector, to follow him, he got up immediately.  The Gospel then tells us of a meal at Matthew’s house, where lots of ‘tax collectors and sinners’ were present, and Jesus was there.  Matthew had only been following Jesus for a few hours and already he was drawing others to the Lord.  What a great example for us!

The Gospel tells us that when the Pharisees saw this they were indignant and took the disciples to task.  These were not the right kind of people for someone like Jesus to associate with.  But Jesus overheard and told them that he had come for those who were, as it were, on the outside.  My brothers and sisters, the Church is not a club.  Dietrich Bonhoeffer, one of the great German theologians of last century, who was hanged in a concentration camp by the Nazis, said that the Church is only truly the Church when it exists for and is focussed on those who are not its members.  In other words, when we are about sharing God’s love with the world and sharing the Good News of Jesus with others in such a way that they, too, are drawn into a relationship with him.

If we are to do this and to bear fruit, we need to start by loving one another.  It is, after all, the ‘new’ commandment Jesus gave the disciples at the Last Supper.  And it applies to us as well.  It’s not an optional club rule we can choose to ignore.  The people around us, even those we don’t necessarily get on with so readily, even the ones who sometimes annoy us, are given to us, as a gift from the Lord, as a gift ‘in the learning of love’.  I refer you back to the passage from Colossians that I started with, and to the final verse.  On top of all those qualities he lists, Paul tells them to ‘put on love’.  He is telling them (and us) how to live as Christians.

So, as we draw breath over these next few weeks, in readiness for a new Church year and a new season in the mission of our parishes, let us start by asking God the Holy Spirit to come into our hearts afresh, to melt us, mould us and fill us anew, to break our often stony hearts and be helped to really love one another, because when people start to come – and if we pray, if we dare to trust that God will, indeed, answer our prayers for growth, if we are bold in inviting people and being ready to give account of the hope we have in us – then we want them to find a community whose hallmark is love.  If they find that, then they will want to be part of it.

Father Matt

October 2022

“God save the King”

It feels strange to say and to sing it. As we do so, it comes with a degree of sadness because the change in wording forces us to mark that we no longer have a sovereign Queen: we are reminded of the passing of the monarch who has been a central part of our national consciousness for the whole lives of many of us, for you would have to be in your eighties to have remembered the death of the late Queen’s father, King George VI.

This weekend we continue to process the death of Her Majesty, to pause and reflect on her significance to our nation, to celebrate all that she meant to us and, if we were lucky enough, to recall a time when we might have met her. A gentleman told me on Thursday evening of his encounter with her at Badminton. He sat watching the Horse Trials with his wife, with two empty chairs in a row before him. Her Majesty came over and asked if they minded her sitting there, as she didn’t want to block his view. I’m sure the Monarch could sit where she liked, but she was humble and considerate enough to ask first. This anecdote shows that, despite all the protocol which surrounds the Royal Family, Her Majesty was grounded, gentle and concerned for others.

Her life was marked by her commitment to serve her nation, to be a role model of what it means to be part of this United Kingdom and Commonwealth. From serving during the war, slipping out to celebrate VE Day in the streets, to speaking to the nation in times of crisis and showing such strength when she mourned alone her beloved husband: alone because of Covid restrictions. In an age which, during her 70 reign, saw a change in our priorities increasingly from public responsibility to personal satisfaction, Her Majesty always sought to put duty and service first: something on which perhaps we should seek to model ourselves.

The Queen’s faith was not something which she kept to herself. At her Coronation her first act, on entering Westminster Abbey, was to go to the high altar and to pray: to put herself into the hands of God. She was anointed with the Oil of Chrism, the oil used on the newly baptised and the newly confirmed – a sacred act which was hidden from the TV cameras because she felt it to be so significant. Each Christmas families across the world heard of her faith in Jesus Christ, “her anchor” which truly marked her out as “Elizabeth the Confessor”

It is worth considering that, for one who held such faith in Jesus, Her Majesty is now in the presence of her King, our King, the King of Heaven.

The next ten days will see a nation in mourning, both nationally and locally. During this period there will be prayers at midday here and the church will remain open until 10pm. Books of Condolence are in all churches across the Benefice for people to come and add their names and messages of sympathy and thanks. Please do tell your neighbours and friends. All these will be collated together by the Diocese of Exeter and then nationally.

Services during this time will reflect the period of mourning as we pray for the repose of the soul of Her Majesty and for her family. Next Sunday, 18^th September, the West Devon Civic Service of Commemoration will be held here at 2pm.

So, as we mark the passing of our beloved monarch, echoing those beautiful words, “may flights of angels sing thee to thy rest”, we also embrace and affirm our allegiance to our new monarch, King Charles III. God Save The King.                       

Fr Matt.