RECTOR’S REPORT TO THE APCM 2025

THE ROAD MAP TO THE KINGDOM IS ROOTED IN MISSION: THE STRATEGIC FRAMEWORK, THE RECTOR’S RETIREMENT AND BEYOND

‘As ye have therefore received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk ye in him: Rooted and built up in him, and stablished in the faith, as ye have been taught, abounding therein with thanksgiving.’ (Colossian 2. 6-7)

So, what does Shaping for Mission and the Rector’s Retirement have in common? Well Diocesan strategies come and go and so do Rector’s but the work of God’s Church in the parishes continues.

I see my retirement as something positive not just for me but also for the Loggerheads Benefice. You will now have the chance to experience a new style of leadership from the one which I have given for the last four and half years. So in faith lets go forward together albeit in different directions.

So after 35 years in parochial ministry I am now ready to move on to retirement. Yes, I have other things I want to do. I am planning to write a Bible Commentary on the letter of James. I shall be concerned with what this letter of scripture means to us today reading the New Testament in the language of the NRSV and to apply his theology to our own context. I intend to be an active member of British Legion and further my trade union work as the Chair of the National Faith Workers branch of the Community Union. I ask for your prayers and thoughts as I prepare to take on new challenges and responsibilities.

OK less about me more about you, the faithful Christians of the Loggerheads benefice. Many of the comments made in earlier reports still apply. However this report will not be briefer than last year’s as I intend to focus upon some of the more theological and deeper aspects of our ministry together in the light of our Mission Statement and my announcement to retire at the end of June this year.

I start this report with a clear understanding of our context. As you know Loggerheads, roughly at the geographical centre of the Benefice, is an area of modern housing that continues to expand. Each parish has its own distinctive character but with the common aim of witnessing for God in these communities. I have tried to align myself to the Diocesan invitation to follow Christ in the footsteps of Saint Chad, to develop Discipleship, encouraging Vocation, and inspire Evangelism. An important part of this has been to carry out the duties of a Training Incumbent and support the vocation of our Assistant Curate, The Revd Dawn Walker who is very much part of the ministry of this Benefice.

My Priestly Duties have included leading worship and encourage prayer in the parishes of Ashley, Mucklestone, Broughton, and Croxton. I have tried to review how the congregations are spiritually enriched through this worship. An important part of this has been to encourage young families and schools to find a place within an accessible pattern of worship that speaks to them. I have cherished the flexible pattern of worship that involves Eucharistic and non-Eucharist services led by both ordained and lay ministers. The aim is to increase the depth of spirituality among the congregations through its worship and prayer life.

We have worked together to identify mission opportunities within the parishes and realise these as mission initiatives. We have worked to specific targets to build up the body of Christ in Loggerheads. To promote Christian outreach through more effective engagement with families, including, those new to the area. We are a visible Christian presence in the life of the local communities and seek to develop strategies for ensuring good pastoral care. In other words, to be at the heart of our communities, to bring the love of God to all. As a Ministry Team we work with the parishes to evaluate and implement their Mission Action Plans. To encourage all parishes in the Benefice to be more outward looking in their focus and to recognise charitable giving as at the heart of the Christian Gospel.

The Christian Life grows from Worship & Prayer

In the New Testament God was present in the midst of his people in the person of his Son, Jesus Christ. For Jesus, hidden under form of flesh, was in truth the presence of the living God. Here he was, and those who were drawn to Jesus could go to him. Some did not recognise him, some shied away from the challenge he presented, but he was there to be found by those who wanted to.

Through the Holy Spirit we are never out of God’s presence, for this is a constant reality. Whether it is Solomon’s Temple or any of the Churches of the Faxton group, no building can contain God. But the house of God is a special place. Here we can come and meet him. ‘This is my body, this is my blood’

The faithful in this Benefice know that there is no substitute for regular involvement in our sacramental life. They continue to wait faithfully for new people to join them and will make them welcome. We need then to be forward looking people. Yes, celebrate the past where it has been fertile. And to move on without too much judgement where it has not been. And what about the communities in our Benefice? Are they prepared to trust Jesus’ promise to act decisively through his Church? Or will it timidly keep on the edge of things, afraid or unwilling to commit itself?

We can never play down the importance of Church attendance. During the summer months the service of Holy Communion in some of our churches became progressively less well attended. There are various possible lines of approach. One might think in terms of the Church putting on services in response to demand, and the inference would be that if a particular service no longer met a need at a particular time of the year it should be withdrawn. Just like a retailer might remove an unpopular or slow selling line from the shelves of a supermarket. This would be a very cynical approach to our subject. One might, again, think in terms of the Church putting on services in competition with other attractions like doing the washing, horse riding, or Sunday shopping. If the response is not good, or falls off, the inference would be that the service needed to be brightened up – made more attractive – more popular hymns, fewer prayers, shorter and more interesting readings, brighter and more controversial sermons. Or perhaps the time of the service or its length could be altered. Again, in practical terms, considerations like these must often be considered, but an approach along these lines would be very inadequate.

What we need to do, surely, is to get down to some basic thinking. To try to see our services not as isolated religious occasions or observances, but as fitting into the pattern of our whole life as Christians. What part does public worship play in the Christian life? What might it fulfil, and more to the point what function ought it to fulfil? The idea of squeezing God into a gap of an hour or so each week of our lives doesn’t really make much sense in terms of a committed Christian life. But Church services are important because it is the place where we find forgiveness and peace of mind in the presence of God. Having found this we can go forward in confidence to do his will.

Christianity is all about COMMITMENT – and there can be no commitment without giving. The most important thing that we can give is our time. You can GIVE your time to worship God regularly to share together in communion, to celebrate our faith and to see God in all things. We must take time for prayer, for reading the Holy Bible, for learning and for growing. We can use our time to serve God by serving others, to the benefits of our Church and Community – by using the many Talents that we possess. Talents are God given and we all have some. There are many activities in our Church and Parish that provide ample opportunities for us to use them.

Unless the kingdom of heaven is something real and important to us, we are unlikely to make much progress either in understanding or in practising the principles that Jesus set out. In the NT Jesus challenge us to sort out our priorities - to decide whether the kingdom of heaven means anything more to us than a sentimental idea.

There is nothing in the teaching of Jesus to suggest that we can choose how seriously we want to go in for Christianity. We have no choice but to commit ourselves fully. The test of our faith, is the test of sanctity - how far are we living by the standards of the kingdom of heaven? The standard is the ideal and it is important that we don’t become disillusioned if we, at first seem to make very little progress towards the ideal. Only God knows what each person is up against.

The important thing is to keep the ideal in view and to keep on trying to grow towards it. It is also important that we should not get the idea that in order to approach this ideal, we must renounce all our responsibilities in this world.

In the early days of the Christian Church, it was thought that the end of this world was very near - that after Jesus had ascended into heaven, he would return in glory very soon, tomorrow, or the next day, and bring about the end of the world as we know it. Believing this, nothing mattered very much. They tied to live from day to day, neglecting worldly things completely, praying, watching, waiting, so that they would be ready when their Lord came.

Jesus will return in glory to judge both the living and the dead - This we know; but meantime we can’t just drop all our responsibilities, rather we have got to do something far more difficult - to use God’s gifts as FAITHFUL stewards in the way he wants us to.

In this section of the report I want to talk about the Family of our Benefice as part of the Household of Faith. This family is made up of all those who look to God as their heavenly Father, and the Church as their Holy Mother. A family which transcends the boundaries of blood relations, of geography, of life and death. Those Christians who have departed this life are still fellow members with us of this great family. And in the end, of course all people are God’s children, whether or not they recognise this fact. Potentially the Household of faith embraces all.

In St. Paul’s day, the local Church in a particular place very likely was literally a household. It would be a bigger family unit than our average family, including possibly several generations. We read in the NT of whole households being baptised, and in that situation, that house would then become the Church in that place. There were no church buildings, and they would meet at home for their worship.

The household Church of St. Paul’s day is now the Parish Church. We talk of our parish church as God’s house in this place. The characteristics of family life are to be found in our relationships as members of the worshipping body of this parish. Many of our hymns and prayers refer to us as brothers and sisters. The funeral service still talks of the departed ones in these terms. But by and large we are rather embarrassed by such language. At best it is regarded as a theoretical exercise.

God’s family on earth is certainly far from perfect, but we are Children of the same heavenly Father. Whether or not it would be helpful to go around referring to one another as brother and sister, this relationship should have something to teach us about our dealings with one another.

Christians are sometimes referred to as “do-gooders” and this phrase is often meant as a term of contempt. The implication is that we are always poking our nose in, and not really doing anything effective to help. This is grossly unfair, and we resent it. However we ought to redouble our efforts to prove that we have a real concern – we can’t evade our duty to love our neighbour as ourselves. If outsiders can pick up such wrong ideas, and given an appearance of truth, certainly we must look again and look hard, at what “doing good” entails for us.

How does our Christian faith come out in our own family life? How is our love of God reflected in our relationships with those we live with every day? In terms of loyalty, understanding, support, unselfishness, practical help for each other – in a word, LOVE? So how does this LOVE come out in the larger life of the parish and congregation? Do we present to the world a compelling picture of a loving community, or a caricature? How does this LOVE come out in our relationships with the wider Christian family and the world? In the light of the Christian Gospel, we cannot keep ourselves to ourselves. The Good Samaritan didn’t stop to enquire whether the injured man was a parishioner. We should be concerned to help wherever there is need. We belong to the household of faith – as our faith grows, and as our sense of belonging to God’s household and our loyalty to the family develops, our interpretation of doing good, and our realisation of the opportunities we can find, will develop also.

This year the Lent Programme was based upon a weekly Eucharist with a short teaching homily. I want us to think about the process of learning. Learning means education— and we tend to think of this as something we receive when we were young - at school or University. The popular idea is that it is then that we soak up knowledge and breathe a sigh of relief when it is all over. If we’ve soaked up enough, it will last us the rest of our life, and if we haven’t, well who cares any way. But it isn’t like that really, is it?

Don’t we go on learning? Now it is true that the way we learn as adults is different from the basic education of a child. The child has to conquer certain basic skills - reading, writing, and being able to handle numbers. So let us think about some examples of the way as adults we go on learning. There is the area of practical skills. Maybe we’ve never done any wallpapering in our lives. One day we decide the situation is desperate. We take advice, we find out what we can, and then we have a go - and in this whole process we’ve learned quite a lot, though not, all there is to know! We learn how to adjust to a new way of life. We learn also through different moral dilemmas. When people come to us for advice can we give an answer based on something we learned ages ago, or haven’t we got to do some thinking before we can be of real help.

So we do go on learning. But we learn most when we are presented with some new situation, some problem, some decision, or crisis, in which we realise that we can’t really cope without finding out more. Not everyone learns, even in such situations. Some people shut off that particular part of their minds. Others get someone else to tell them what to do or do it for them.

The person who learns a lot is the one who faces up to situations, asks lots of questions, does some thinking, and then tries to do something about it. Learning then is not simply a question of soaking up facts. There are too many facts; too many subjects to ever be able to know them all - or which are likely to be most useful. We learn most then in trying to relate to situations, problems, and experiences.

This is true of life in general. It is true of religious learning also. There is a point in finding out the basic facts about prayer, about the life of Jesus, about the church, about the moral insights of the 10 Commandments, the insights about God that the Creed and so on. But education in the wider sense requires us to test these basic insights against our own experience. This means keeping our eyes and ears open for God in every part of our life. Looking for the hand of God in the past, in history and not least in the Bible, in the present, in other people’s lives and our own. Questioning in our own mind, and asking others, sharpening up their experience, reading books that help us to understand better. So how good are we at learning, and how far are we prepared to go to find out more?

Our witness to the world leads all to Christ and this involves Evangelism & Outreach

We assert in our creeds that we believe in the Church, that is, One Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church. These words describe certain essential features of the Church we believe in. Let’s think a little about the implications of the word Apostolic. This aspect of the Church represents the continuity of the Christian Church from its earliest days until now. It links us to the original apostles of our Lord.

The continuity of the Church is most obviously seen through its ministry - the ministry of Bishops, Priests, and Deacons. These three orders constitute what is often known as the Apostolic Ministry of the Church. One of the questions must be asked and answered is how important or essential is this historical ministry. It is a question we ought to know something about.

Now as the Church grew and spread, eleven apostles, as they now were, were not going to be able to cope with all there was to be done. In the Acts of the Apostles we see how the Church, under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, began to expand rapidly on a universal front. The first thing was to appoint a successor to Judas, and we see Mathias joining the number of the apostles. Then as the Church spread to other countries through the missionary work of St. Paul, who himself was not one of the original apostles, it was necessary to appoint ministers to look after these new congregations. The apostles did this by laying their hands on other disciples, commissioning them in Christ’s name to share their ministry.

The apostles were the first bishops. They consecrated other bishops to minister to the new churches, and eventually to take their places when they died. Then as the new churches expanded, and the bishops could no longer be there at every celebration of the Eucharist, priests were ordained to do some of this work. We read in the Acts of the Apostles how St. Paul ordained elders or priest to look after the Christians in the new churches he founded. We also read in the Acts of the Apostles how the order of deacons was founded to relieve the apostles of some of the routine tasks that were preventing them from getting on with more vital work. Stephen and six others were made deacons to help in the visiting of the sick and the distribution of the relief to the needy.

Thus, Our Lord founded the Church on the apostles, and they carried on his work through the power and guidance of the Holy Spirit. And all this draws out attention to the fact that the Church as a whole is commissioned by our Lord we serve their ministries and for their

- a commission which as we have seen, is most clearly visible in its continuity through the ordained ministry.

So when we assert our belief in the Apostolic Church, we imply an Apostolic band of people, both lay and ordained pledged to carry out Christ’s commission to convert the world. It is a formidable task, one that we could not hope to fulfil, except in the strength of God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. And God’s grace is so freely available to us, especially in the Sacraments.

CONCLUSION

Mission is heart speaking to heart across the suffering of the human condition. It is the tiny movement of the Spirit in local places where the members of the Church take others under their wing just as the everlasting God has us all under his enduring wings.

Pastoral Work & Out Reach needs to be identified more closely with evangelism as our witness to the world. Thus we seek to lead all to Christ by Church contact with the wider community and see this as an important part of a much larger process of Church growth. This may take many years to realise. But we are the people of faith. And it is in the faith of Christ Jesus that we continue this important work.

For me one of the many the highlights of ministry in the Loggerheads Benefice has been working with colleagues. The Revd Sara Humphries and the Revd Dawn Walker have been prayerful, reliable and loyal colleagues to me. Their friendship and support during the time we have worked together for the Kingdom is much appreciated. They are God given faithful ministers in this benefice and we are very blessed by their presence. I also very much appreciate the ministry of Fr Roger Leg, Jen Caldwell, Paul Grifin and Lyne Watson who work with me in our Lords glad service. And thanks as always to the Churchwardens of the parishes that make up the Loggerheads Benefice. I thank God daily for the ministries of all these people along with the congregations of Ashley, Mucklestone, Broughton and Croxton.

This is my last Rector’s report. So do I have any regrets? I am sad that I was not asked to be Acting Rural Dean and oversee the initial work of the strategic framework in the Ecceshall deanery and a possible merger with other deaneries as I think I could have made an important contribution there. I would have also appreciated a Sabbatical during 2024, but my application was refused. There is some research that supports the idea of a micro-retirement of two or three months as beneficial thus allowing clergy to return to work refreshed and energized. However in my my aspirations for a Sabbatical I was not looking for a rest from burn-out, rust-out and stress but rather an opportunity to undertake a programme of full-time study to promote clergy wellbeing. In the wider Church and World there have been some disappointments over the years and these can be found in my various publications. However serving as Rector of the Loggerheads Benefice has been a positive experience and I thank you all for this.

The Revd. Dr. David Isiorho Candlemas 2025