THE challenges facing almost every church congregation hardly need enumerating, particularly not in a specialist newspaper like this one: how to engage with people who are ‘”spiritual but not religious”, busy with sport or shopping on Sunday mornings, disaffected with institutions and traditional establishments.
Added to this are the unique difficulties of the tiny, rural church: elderly congregations, few in number; crumbling, unheated churches; rapidly rising costs; and one weary priest, staggering from service to service, wheels spinning, surplice flapping. All this paints a picture of despondency and despair. Broken congregations mutter darkly about being “one generation away from extinction”.
And yet there is hope: there still survive numerous market towns and village communities that are lively and engaged; the British countryside is outstanding in the beauty and diversity of its landscapes, plants, and animals; and more and more people are beginning to see the advantages of rural environments — to visit, if not to live in.
Nor are our churches completely doomed. For every mouldy, locked building, gradually crumbling into the ground — “grass, weedy pavement, brambles, buttress, sky” — there are dozens of optimistic communities, small in worshippers undoubtedly, but committed in prayer and action to the maintenance of a building “proper to grow wise in” and a faith that transforms lives.
How, then, to bridge the gap between believer and uninterested passer-by? How to offer a glimpse of the glorious eternal to the earthbound sceptic? How to tell a new story, not of failure and decline, but of relevance and joy: an offering of space and peace, community and belonging? There are a multitude of approaches available, but pilgrimage offers one path along which small, rural churches in particular can journey with only a modicum of effort and outlay, and that can bring affirmation and connection.
A PILGRIMAGE is, broadly speaking, a spiritual journey to a sacred place. Rural parishes have the sacred space, and can create the material to make the journey to and from this space a spiritual one. Creating a “pilgrim path” is not the work of one person or interest group alone, but gathers people with varying gifts and skills, offering an opportunity to work on a joint project for the benefit of the whole community.
This, in fact, is the first task — to bring together everyone who might be interested in such a project: walkers, writers, artists, route-makers, map-creators, booklet-designers and -printers. They do not all have to be committed Christians: pilgrimage is a liminal activity, which allows individuals the space and time to reflect while occupying restless bodies with the activity of walking, in itself an aid to creative and productive thought. By being offered this space and time, it is hoped, pilgrims will encounter that “Other” that, Christians believe, is God, and thus begin, however tentatively, their journey of faith.
Seek participants from local history groups, walking and rambling organisations, and creative communities, as well as from within the church community itself: it is surprising how many types can be brought into such a project.
The first task for the newly convened group is to plot the walks. The number of walks planned should be proportionate to the number of enthusiastic people whom you have in your group. You need to be ambitious, but not overly so: ore than one walk is a good idea, but have too many and you could easily be overwhelmed.
Actually plotting the walks is a simple operation: spread out a large Ordnance Survey map on a table, and get everyone to point out their favourite walk. There should be certain guidelines: the walk should be based at a church, and the route should be circular, to avoid transport issues.
If you can find a walk that incorporates a visit to another church within the parish, benefice, or deanery, this is ideal, but do not compromise on length to include another church. Your walk should be between four and five miles — any shorter, and people feel that it hardly counts; longer, and those with less energy (including families) are excluded. The average walking speed on such pilgrimages is two miles an hour. A two-hour trip is just about right.
DECIDE what sort of literature you want to accompany your pilgrim routes. Will it contain route directions as well as reflections? Will you want illustrations and maps? Be careful about copyright. Sketch maps by members of the community are by far the easiest, as are illustrations by artists from your group.
At your first meeting, while everyone is full of enthusiasm for the walks and the project, try to get individual volunteers to commit themselves to specific tasks. Fix the time and date for the next meeting, and share your expectations of what will be achieved by then. If you have internet access and can upload your literature, that is marvellous — but nothing beats a booklet that can be picked up from the church building itself, or taken on the walk without the worry of an intermittent phone signal.
THERE is always the danger that individuals will pick up the project and “run away” with it. In your group meetings, try to get agreement on what the literature will look like, how much information will be included, what the word count should be, and how many illustrations. It is great if each guide reflects the character of the church and the nature of the landscape, but there should be an overall style and approach within which variations can occur.
Pick a date for your launch and try to stick to it: deadlines are excellent for encouraging progress. If you do not have the capacity to offer a regular programme of guided walks along your pilgrim paths, then an initial walk to launch the project is a good compromise. Tea and cake at the end is always welcome, and offers the opportunity for involvement by those who may not be able to undertake a walk.
Try to maintain the energy for the project: introduce new routes; offer the occasional guided walk; ensure that information is present in all the churches near by. Don’t let your posters get too damp and battered, and remove overly wilted leaflets. Pilgrim paths can energise a whole church community and enable its members to offer to the wider community something that it might have forgotten that it needed.
The Revd Dr Sally Welch is Vicar of the Kington Group in the diocese of Hereford.
