One Parish: Two Churches

Just under two weeks ago Bishop Richard re-dedicated St Mark's Church and we are starting the journey of getting used again to being one parish with two operating churches. It's good for me to make the walk into Surbiton and up the hill to St Mark's. I feel I am re-connecting with a part of the parish that I don't so regularly walk in and I think that is a very good thing. St Mark's end of the parish has a very different feel to St Andrew's; it's easy to forget when you are in the idyllic Maple Road setting that there is a busy Surbiton with a stream of commuters flooding to and from the train station every day. Just spending a little time in St Mark's I remember that it has a large footfall, people really do drop into pray there and that is a challenge for us as a community to consider whether we can keep the church open for that purpose.

I remember the first time that I went to Greenbelt and a parish priest from Liverpool was talking about his commitment to the physical reality of his parish: walking the streets, knowing the place, was essential to his understanding of parochial ministry. I implicitly agreed with him, and the re-opening of St Mark's has reminded me of the importance of being connected to place and space: St Mark's is a different place from St Andrew's and it provides different opportunities for our parish ministry. Of course, St Mark's has changed and we as a community have changed; no longer are we two separate worshipping communities, we have truly become one and that is the wonderful fruit of the parish vision project. As we learn to re-tred the ground of St Mark's both inside and outside the building I pray that we will honour its distinctiveness and the accompanying particularity of its surroundings. I pray that we will listen to the voice of God as we discern how to live in and between two worship centres and open ourselves to the voice of those who will re-appear on our doorsteps. It will inevitably take some time, some trying things out, some getting it wrong, some trying again, but if we maintain a vision of unity in valuing difference, then operating two churches will really be a blessing and not just an impossible dilemma!

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