Dear Friends,

This letter comes to you as we enter a new phase in the shared life of the two parishes of St Peter & St Paul and St Luke, in bidding farewell to Revd Annie I am losing a wonderful colleague and a fruitful shared ministry that began and ended with breakfast at ‘Bills’ (not Tiffany’s)! Between those two breakfasts lies a period of flourishing for both churches, not least because we made it through Covid together and undiminished.

Both churches have benefitted from the close attention of what has been in effect their own vicar. Annie and I started out with a 3-legged walk but with lockdown we were forced into two parish bubbles which continued after restrictions were lifted. I believe that the parish system works best when one person can dedicate their time and energy to getting to know one small patch of God’s glorious creation.

Now, for a while that will change, I will lose the support of weekly meetings with Annie and St Luke’s will lose their inimitable leader and guide. This means that we must all look after each other, look out for each other and put up with shortcomings and glitches when the wheels of the well-oiled machine fails to deliver quite what we have become used to.

While our Churchwardens go through the new appointments process, we will have to be inventive and flexible; setting out on this journey we will be challenged, but we will also find new gifts, new ways of sharing skills and ideas and new ways of supporting each other.

I look forward to seeing more of old friends and getting to know new folk at St Luke’s and I shall be frustrated by never being able to stay for coffee as I do the Chaldon dash!

In both parishes everyone will need to help out even more than usual and especially in order to support our 4 hard working churchwardens.

Please therefore look out for the places where help is needed, for the people who are run ragged, look out for the opportunities that change can bring and remember that the church is all the people not just the visible ones who look as if they know what they are doing – we need everyone to pitch in to keep this boat afloat.

It is appropriate that these changes come as we move from Eastertide to Trinity, having heard of the extraordinary Acts of the Apostles in forming new faith communities, we go back to ordinary time, the time of consolidating and creating continuity.

My Chaldon readers will be used to my composting analogies, this is a time of taking the riches we have received from Revd Annie and creating a rich mulch into which her successor can be planted, let’s hope that over the coming months we can all be the gardeners that God needs in this place.