Grass roots pastorate

A few weeks ago I was in touch with Fr Chris Reaney, a friend and colleague, since the days when I worked as Wales USPG Area Secretary in the eighties. He's been Vicar of Troedyrhiwgarth in the Llynfi Valley near Maesteg, and we haven't seen each other since his induction, nine years ago. So I arranged to meet him for coffee and lunch in Maesteg, and travelled up by train rather than using the car. As the day return ticket only cost me £5.50 with my rail card, cheaper than driving and better for my carbon footprint!

I went to the station by bus and missed the 10.18 train, due to a lengthy traffic queue on entering Westgate Street. If I'd known, I could have got off the bus a St David's hospital and walked half the distance to the station in good time. The trouble is extensive sewer repair works in the lower section of the street creating a choke point for buses and commercial vehicles accessing the city centre. Still, it gave me time to pop into a Market shop and buy some memory foam cushion insoles, as the ones in my winter shoes have worn thin enough to make them uncomfortable to wear. It left me with plenty of time to queue for a ticket and take the 11.18 instead.

The fifty two minute journey is pleasant, passing through a still verdant rural landscape after leaving  Cardiff suburbs behind. There are touches of autumn colour here and there, but most of the leaves are now darker, almost olive green, as a result of milder air temperatures and no frost. The train takes the main line westwards, passing St Fagans and Pontyclun, then turning north after Bridgend to enter the broad Llynfi Valley. 

There were once coal mines lower down the valley, but Maesteg was built on the benefits from the early iron industry, and is the main town of the old Borough, with an ancient Parish church, Llangynwyd, first planted in the sixth century on the hilltop ridge road, as with other ancient Celtic Christian sites in South Wales.

Chris met me at the station, which is quite close to the town centre. Just beyond the end of the line is an Asda supermarket so there's a large car park, to support both shoppers and park and ride travellers. A useful late twentieth century re-purposing of old railway properties, I think. We walked to the main square and had lunch there in a cafe opposite the town hall, an All Day Breakfast for both of us.

The town hall itself is a huge complex of well used buildings, with a covered market at ground level and a large auditorium above it, an outdoor market and the Town Council offices adjacent. The covered market is redundant since the outdoor market acquired a collection of retail units around its periphery, and is being re-purposed as a library. It's an imposing collection of late Victorian municipal buildings, substantially built in stone and brick, visible across town as they rise above the three storey shops in the main street.

We had much to talk about and shared worries about the continued contraction of the Church in Wales and its public ministry, in the Valleys as well as the city. He worries, as I do that the organisational changes which group Parishes into larger entities in which fewer full time clergy chase around looking after a smaller, more dispersed and mobile membership, will detract from the traditional pastoral role of being present and available in the community for all, knowing people and being known, whether church members or not.

Given our shared history, inspired by world mission through our relationship with USPG it's not at all surprising that we both see the present and future of the church based on the call to flourish in the grass roots of local community, growing its plans for witness, service and proclamation from the bottom up not the top down.

While we were in the cafe getting lunch, I noted how many people Chris stopped to greet and chat with as they came and went. His Parish is the neighbouring one, although he also works Maesteg town itself, and after nine years is a familiar local figure uo and down the Llynfi Valley. That's how it should be for an Anglican Parish Priest.

I've never doubted the need for structures to hold us all together and support us, but they're still too top heavy, to my way of thinking. Perhaps grass roots mission won't flourish again until much of the top heavy component withers away. It's possible this will happen, and one of the casualties will be the loss of its paid professional ministries. It would hurt badly. It would be tough getting there and recovery would be far from certain, but an entirely voluntary kind of ministry for most pastoral purposes would only take us back to where the church started from at the beginning. Would that be so terrible?

I was home again by four, and then did the week's grocery shopping before supper. The train I was on advertised that it would stop at Ninian Park station, fifteen minutes from home at the other side of the Parish. I was pleased at the prospect being home earlier, but the train didn't stop, it sped on to Cardiff Central, and had the usual 61 bus journey back instead. A programming error in the heads up display probably, using a Match Day train schedule instead of the standard one, most likely.