What makes life worth living? Love? Achievement? A good digestion? For some it is a consuming project that takes years in the completing. A cathedral built of match-sticks, a model railway that fills the roof-space, a garden that turns a raw building site into a place of serenity: these are other options. Airfix kits and stamp-collections have their devotees. Munros and the climbing of them claim the attention of others. And there is always messing about in boats, an interest that sometimes takes a person around the world.
Bishop Eric Treacy spent time photographing steam locomotives. Canon Andrew Dow has entertained audiences by breathing out the snorts and clatter they make. Vicars have made notable additions to our favourite animal list – Jack Russell terriers – or our knowledge of flora – Keble Martin.
Some, with Simon Jenkins in the forefront, have built up a singular acquaintance with the architectural delights of English parish churches and cathedrals. Enthusiastic visitors have helped us see what we might otherwise have missed of trompe-l’oeils and pilasters, of entasis and misericords. ‘Here is God’s plenty,’ we have to say when we contemplate our Christian heritages in stone.
And then there are the noble army of editors who ensure that parishioners are kept aware of the Christian faith and its adherents in their midst. We have to mention Hazell Trapnell of ‘The Messenger’, the magazine of St Mary’s, Stoke Bishop, Bristol, that goes to 3,000 homes each quarter, Mike Smith, editor of ‘Spire and Tower’ at St Andrew’s and St Mark’s, Surbiton, Knowle parish magazine (1600 a month) with an editorial team led by Rachel Heselden. The Skegness group of churches publishes ‘Shoreline’ and has as ambitious an approach to getting advertisement revenue as I have seen anywhere. Shirley Collins has edited ‘Outreach’ at Christ Church, Cheltenham for a year. Jude Curtis has edited ‘Grapevine’, the 32-page magazine of St Mary’s, Rushden for 15 years. Unusually the Vicar of Holy Trinity, Stratford-upon-Avon, Patrick Taylor, edits the 1200 a month parish magazine ‘Trinity Times’.
Enthusiasm? There wouldn’t be lively churches – or parish magazines – without it. And when a parish magazine (one of those mentioned above) can confront the problematic issue of L’Arche and the questions people are asking, there can be little doubt that the parish magazine still has a part to play.
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