So uplifting to wake up to a clear blue sky and bright sunshine once more. It's St James' Day today. Just by coincidence when I was sorting stuff out yesterday, I came across an exchange of letters with Archbishop Barry Morgan and myself, about the fate of the huge failing St James's Parish Church near the city centre on Newport Road, dates 2004. After discussion with the congregation, a proposition to redevelop the nave of the building, seating about four hundred, as a multi-use community centre while retaining the chancel for church services was under consideration by the diocesan management team. I was given the go-ahead to turn this into a fully formed plan around which fund raising could take place.
At that time EU funding for developments in deprived areas was still possible to apply for, and the City Council's community services office was interested in helping advance the project. Not long after we started the European Commission revised its funding priorities, redirecting development funds towards Eastern Europe. British and Welsh government development funding was fully committed elsewhere, so the project just died. Two years later St James was closed and I was faced with the heartbreaking task of clearing and dispersing the contents of the church ready for sale.
Eventually it was sold to a housing developer for over a million pounds. Then the big financial crash occurred and it was a decade before conversion work on the building continued. The building conversion was completed in 2022 and now contains sixteen apartments. Externally it looks much the same as it once did. Cleaner and tidier in fact. All apartments are occupied or being traded and appear on property websites, looking very luxurious, taking advantage of the design features of the original church.
I found an article on web reporting on the fate of St James in which I am quoted about the inevitability of closure as it cost £15,000 a year to keep it open for a regular congregation of fifteen. Those mainly elderly members had seen the number of regular attenders drop from 200 in their lifetimes. Few of them lived in the neighbourhood any longer, and commuted to church once a week. Nothing I could say would overcome their sense of hopelessness. They had lost heart. Did they resume worship in the areas they now lived? I've no idea. None of them kept in touch to tell me. You could say the demise of St James' was both natural and inevitable given the changing demographics of the city centre. But was my striving to keep it on life support through the first five years of my ministry a wasted effort? I neither know nor forget.
After breakfast, Clare started baking a batch of bread, and I went off to buy replacement bags of flour, six kilos worth plus a few other items. A heavy load to return with, but good exercise. Clare made stewed veg with TVP for lunch, and baked a couple of the potatoes given by green fingered Keith, to go with it. Being so fresh out of the ground, they tasted delicious. I had a snooze and started a reflection for the feast of the Transfiguration after lunch, and then chatted with Ashley before walking in Llandaff Fields for an hour and a half. Then I had a call from Rachel at supper time and missed tonight's episode of 'The Archers' as well as eating with Clare. I caught up later and listened to an Archer's podcast missed a few weeks ago. Then I read a few more pages of Gabriel Garcia Marquez before turning to tonight's live episode of 'The Sommerdahl Murders', but mistimed the start of it. It meant that I didn't finish it before it was time for bed. It's good nevertheless, that I still have competing interests and conversations to stimulate my mind. A pity about the ageing body which aches and tires too readily these days.
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