Spoilt for choice

CHURCHWARDENS are the head lads, and lasses, of the lay (and seriously unpaid) workforce.

The collective noun could be a staff, after the wands they carry when escorting the bishop.

A worry of wardens might also be appropriate.

Sometimes it’s Buggins’ turn and sometimes it’s muggins’. Sometimes, as with the last post holder at St Thomas’s at Heatherycleugh, in upper Weardale, someone makes the fearful mistake of not turning up for the annual meeting and is thus elected in his unsuspecting absence.

Whatever the reason, there’s not usually a stampede to become a churchwarden – or a rush to the ballot box, either.

Three days ago, however, four candidates – all bright, energetic young women – amicably opposed one another for the two positions at the small rural church of St Thomas’s. It was as if the wands were magic.

Beatrice White is 28, head of music at King James I school in Bishop Auckland and the church’s accomplished organist. Elizabeth Houghton, 32, is her sister.

Celia Turnbull arrived a few months back from Durham, plans at Easter to open the former post office in Wearhead as a craft shop, café and gallery, downplayed her chances.

“I’ve been proposed and seconded, but I’m Nancy New Girl. I’ve no illusions,”

she said.

Heather Ross, the fourth candidate, had to dash off – to work – after last Sunday’s service. As football managers like to say when the whole squad’s fully fit, it was a nice problem to have.

Heatherycleugh, the parish name, embraces the small villages of Cowshill and Lanehead, close to the Durham/Cumbria border. Last time I was there was Palm Sunday 1999, the Reverend Dennis Skelton was retiring after 15 much-loved years and I was mistaken for a potential replacement giving the place the onceover.

“Though the Church of England has considerable capacity for surprise, indeed utter amazement,” the column observed, “nothing so improbable has yet been decreed nor none so unlikely ordained.”

The organist had admitted his mistake.

“I knew I’d seen you somewhere before. I just thought it must have been in church,” he said.

They feared that Dennis, now happily settled back in Sunderland, would be Heatherycleugh’s last resident priest, and so it proved.

The church is now one of seven overseen by the Reverend Susan Kent, who felt the call to ordination at 16 and had to wait 33 years before, nine years ago, it happened.

“I found not being able to become a priest very difficult. There were times when it was like a crucifiction, the worst times of my life,” she says.

“When I saw friends being ordained, I just wanted to be there, too.

When finally it happened, I nearly lifted the roof off the cathedral. That feeling has never left me.”

Helped by a non-stipendiary curate and a retired priest, she also looks after Stanhope, Frosterley, Eastgate, Westgate, St John’s Chapel and Rookhope. “I feel that I’m the luckiest priest in England,” says Susan.

“People tell me that I’ve seven churches to think about. I know that I have, but just look where they are.”

IT’S a God’s-in-his-heaven spring morning, snowdrops brightening the churchyard, crows building high. The notice board indicates that the previous day there’d been a large cake stall, without making clear if it were the stall or the cakes which were particularly big.

On any argument it was successful, raising £250 towards the repair fund. “That’s an awful lot of cake in Lent, my goodness,” Susan chides her congregation, jocularly.

About 30 are present, a good number for a small community, the church draped penitentially in purple.

This Palm Sunday, April 5, the Bishop of Durham will be at St Thomas’s at the start of a week-long visit to the Weardale deanery during which none is likely to mistake him for a potential parish priest.

They’re trying to find a donkey, even a suggestion that the bishop might ride on it. There’s a precedent, after all.

Susan preaches on holiness, cogently and carefully. There are prayers for the unemployed and for those who feel rejected, rousing hymns like Lift High the Cross.

Beatrice and Elizabeth talk afterwards about all that’s going on, how they’re involving young people, rekindling the Sunday School. Celia tells how she’s attended Emmanuel Church in Durham – new, energetic, evangelical – before moving up the dale.

“It was a bit of a culture shock, but I just love being part of this community.

The church is different, but it’s wonderful.”

AFTERWARDS there’s tea and coffee in the nearby village hall, actively marking its centenary year – as is the hall at Frosterley – and itself reflecting changes in rural life.

Restored two years ago, the hall’s now home to an internet café and a recycling shop, even something called a digital photography drop-in.

“It was very run down, becoming a bit of a liability really, but now it’s really vibrant again,” says Sue Senior, the hall committee vice-chairman, who herself arrived from Durham 13 years ago.

It was also in the village hall on Wednesday evening that the church folk of Heatherycleugh gathered in secret conclave to cast their votes for churchwarden. Heather and Elizabeth will job share, Beatrice will become the second churchwarden, Celia will be deputy warden.

“It’s a good, creative approach to rural ministry,” said Susan the following day. “This is a church that’s really coming alive.”

■ The Bishop of Durham’s Holy Week engagements include Heatherycleugh at 10am on Palm Sunday and Wolsingham at 6pm. He leads an open air Good Friday service in Crook at 10am and a 6pm Festival Praise service at Willington on Easter Day. The Reverend Susan Kent is on 01388-528722.