Curacy at St Chad’s, Lichfield 1975-78

The process of discerning to which parish I should go had begun earlier. I’d had an offer in my first year at Cuddesdon from Tom Christie, who had been Vicar of St Augustine Wisbech (and training incumbent there to Tom Butler, who retired as Bishop of Southwark in 2010) and who was now Vicar of All Saints Whitstable in the Diocese of Canterbury. I spent a weekend there, but wasn’t in any way drawn to work with Tom in that place. I was ‘sponsored for training’ by the Diocese of Lichfield, so I went to see Canon Dudley Hodges in Lichfield, the Diocesan Director of Ordinands, and asked if there was any possibility of being able to consider more than one alongside each another, to give me a better idea! There seemed to be no objection to this and three were mentioned as possibilities. I was invited to meet Roger Williams (who had been a curate at St Peter’s Wolverhampton and was now at Fenton, Stoke) and we had lunch together in Stoke and he drove me round the parish etc. What I was really after first and foremost, was a sense of collegiality with the man who would be my ‘training vicar’. I liked him, but didn’t feel that immediate sense of closeness. Next I was invited to spend a weekend at St Giles in Shrewsbury. The Vicar, John Cutter, was an older man with a young family. He had problems with vision, but didn’t let that bother him too much. I ‘ate’ around the parish and they would have been willing to have me, but before having to reply to the offer, I went to meet John Widdas at St Chad’s, Lichfield and knew straight away that this was the one.

That was settled, I think, by the time I started my second year at Cuddesdon and gave point and purpose to that time. I had decided that I didn’t want to be ordained until the Michaelmas of 1975. Otherwise you went straight from College into a parish and into a new life-style, without any break or time for further reflection. I was also still marking ‘O’ level papers and (I think), returned to do some supply teaching at TP Riley in Bloxwich, so I wasn’t short of funds. Where I would live was still a little uncertain. My predecessor as curate had lived in ‘Well Cottage’, a small cottagey style property, next to the Well, on the corner of the Churchyard. The parish was considering turning that into a small parish centre, providing facilities that the medieval/18 th century church didn’t have. In fact they managed to buy a small, modern terraced house only 100 yards away, between the church and Netherstowe School, 38 St Chad’s Road. It was ideal and a cut above most curate’s houses, with modern central heating. At some point during the year, I spent a weekend in the parish and liked everything and everyone I met. The Widdases found that their children took to me immediately, and that was a definite ‘plus’ from their point of view.

John Widdas was from Bradford originally and had trained from 18 at Kelham, doing National Service at some point during his time there, or perhaps before he began. He had met his wife Annette (from Bucks) whilst on a parish mission I think, and had carried on a fairly clandestine romance when such things were forbidden! They married shortly after his ordination and he had been a curate of John Taylor and prior to coming to Lichfield a year before me, had been an incumbent in the Stoke area. His

neighbour there had been Ray Furnell (later to be Rector of Hanley then Dean of Bury St Edmunds and of York) – a great ‘character’ and they were buddies. The Widdases had three children: Mark (about 10 when I arrived), David ‘the dreamer’ (7) and Rachel (3 or 4). They lived in the ‘old’ Rectory, a great Victorian house set in its grounds off Gaia Lane. I always felt welcome there. The boys went to the Cathedral School and their parents worried about them! John was a hard working Kelham-style priest, with no catholic frills, who had recently been touched by the Charismatic movement (then in its first great wave in England at this period) and he was increasingly into exploring what all of that might mean for his ministry, especially a healing ministry. Later he found

himself drawn into deliverance ministry and all sorts of unusual things, but at the time I was with him, he was still very much ‘mainstream’ and coping with a large parish (population then about 19000 I think) with lots of occasional offices. Apart from St Chad’s itself (the site of the place where St Chad himself spent his last months and died), there was a small country mission church in a hamlet at Elmhurst and a parish hall had been built in the late 50s in the estates in middle of the parish, at which a Sunday School and Sunday evening service was held. In St Chad’s, the Sunday pattern was 8am Holy Communion, 9.30am Parish Communion, 11.15am Family Service (for most of my time we had a contingent of girls from the Chadswell Residential Centre brought down for this) and 6.30pm Evensong.

Looking back on it now, I can see that there was probably a lot going on in which I wasn’t involved: once John was confident that I was capable, my main contribution was to work at the basics of sacramental and pastoral ministry, home and hospital visiting, youth work, occasional offices, schools work, ‘Toddlers’ and adult education through Confirmation groups etc and with the Choir. In many ways, this set the pattern for much of my later ministry. I also was given opportunity to work a little in the Diocese through Post Ordination Training, membership of the Youth Committee and some adult education events. It was at this time that the Lichfield Counselling Service was started and I helped Sue Brough in delivering some of the training in Christian pastoral understanding that undergirded the philosophy of the scheme. I was increasingly involved – again through Sue Brough – with Friary Grange School, coming of course to meet Vivien Hyde as a result, and once there had been a change of Head at Netherstowe, began to make some links there, despite that Head’s sudden and early death. Apart from our own two Church Schools (Springdale Infants and Stowe School), we also had links with several of the county primaries and Christmas and Harvest particularly were always very busy with school services.

The things I didn’t get over involved in were the Sunday Schools (there was one in Well Cottage as well as at St Chad’s Hall), the Hall Sunday evening service (which with the House Groups were designed to provide an outlet for those exploring charismatic spirituality and teaching – John’s great one was held on a Tuesday evening and by repute it could go on for hours) and the management of the PCC, with which apart from attending, I had very little to do. The beauty of the time was that I was free and encouraged to work at the things that were just there presenting themselves. It was a time of growth and new people were constantly turning up of all ages, many asking serious questions about faith and about their lives. It was also a very fruitful time for vocations. From the congregation of my time there, the following were then or afterwards called into priestly ministry: Peter Rainsford, Mary Singleton, Brin Singleton (and Brin's older brother who died tragically in a motor-bike accident), Brian Williams, Elizabeth Wall, Janet Heeley, Kevin Dunn, Brian Prentice and Bob Lintern.

From the start, between us, John and I made sure that we spent time together. I persuaded him that we should meet for at least one office a day – Evensong, which later became a time for the town clergy to get together three times a week. We also met for a long staff meeting every Tuesday morning and would have occasional days away for longer term planning and discussion. These were a great blessing, and I was given full opportunity to share what I was experiencing and thinking and encouraged to pursue what seemed right to me. We trusted each other and it was the happiest of relationships, confirmed by a moving letter from John received shortly before his death in 2008, with which he sent me a gift of a white stole.

My Ordination as Deacon happened on Michaelmas Day 1975 (29 September) in my home parish Church of St Michael and All Angels, Tettenhall, when they were celebrating the 1000 th anniversary of their foundation. I was deaconed (along with Michael Newman and Colin Preece) by Rt Revd John Waine, recently consecrated Bishop of Stafford. My family, friends from Wolverhampton, Wisbech and Cuddesdon came to support, together with a coach load from Lichfield. What struck me first was the amount of trust people put in clergy, even when very wet around the ears. From the start I found myself in amazing personal situations: yanking a dad out of a pub because his children were marooned unsupervised on the streets; finding myself in the middle of matrimonial situations; being visited at home by an unknown man whose opening line was ‘I am a transvestite’; having a woman of my age in the congregation telling me that she’d had a vision that she was to marry me (I had to tell her that I hadn't been given the same vision!); and especially being invited to share the last months of people’s lives in a pretty immediate way and then taking their funerals. One who made a deep impression was Maureen Chard. Her husband John and daughter and son were all later confirmed. I loved taking Communion to people at home (I wasn’t overwhelmed by the amount of it in the way that I was when I went to Bilbrook). I enjoyed preaching, taking Confirmation training, almost everything really – and just having time to visit people in their homes (sometimes complete strangers) and talk with them about the everyday and the eternal. I think that I took more child funerals than I have taken altogether in the 40+ years since then. I don’t know why that should have been, but it was. Starting a Youth Group was exciting and we had times away at the Singleton’s cottage near Criccieth. Pretty well my first venture before I started officially was a weekend at Dovedale with some of them. There seemed to be lots of people in their twenties and thirties, some married, some single and we started a Supper Club, which provided a very pleasant social and support group for me and I think was important for them to help them feel part. That had a membership of about 20. And of course there was being included in the Friary School’s summer camps in Guernsey…..how life changing that proved to be!

I was ordained a Priest twelve months later (September 26th 1976) in Lichfield Cathedral by Rt Revd Kenneth Skelton, Bishop of Lichfield. He knew me by then, for occasionally he would turn up at St Chad’s on a Sunday and hide himself behind a pillar – guaranteed to make a new curate who was preaching fairly nervous. That same evening I presided at Holy Communion for the first time, again with a large supporting congregation representing every part of my life. Celebrating Communion became and has been the bedrock of my ministry. It brings with it a constant reminder that everything I am and do is for God, who nurtures and sustains me as I seek to do the same for others. It also reminds me that both the resources and responsibility are his and that I am not asked to be anything other than what he hopes that I become. It is a joy and delight to share this role with fellow priests and to know that all springs from him.

Lichfield was actually made up on four parishes plus the Cathedral in 1975. St Chad’s benefited from being the only one that set out to attract families with young children and to be staffed by clergy who related well with folk, with the result that we drew quite a congregation (and I suppose that regularly we had 180+ through the doors most Sundays), some from across the city. Actually our Churchyard wall was also the boundary of St Michael’s parish, so we weren’t exactly in the centre of our own parish. Huge developments had been going on the northern end of the city as they were later to do on the southern end in St Michael’s Parish in Boley Park. We never made inroads into the council estates (with the exceptions of a few families) but we did draw a lot of intelligent, energetic and young people. There were hardly any house-bound communicants and elderly attenders – so different from most places I’ve worked since. Many of the congregation, living in Lichfield because of their jobs, were well educated and gifted in their own professions. There was very little of an ‘old St Chad’s’ guard, for many had come from other places and other churches, or no church at all and

were eager to explore things afresh, mainly within an Anglican framework. There were one or two who found Anglican ways irksome and would have liked things to be more free!

As always, there are parishioners who stick in my memory and I want to record a mention of some here. Someone who helped me enormously was Eva Bateman (who died in March 2010). Eva was a widow in her 50s, with serious bronchial problems, who loved the church and would do anything to help. She was willing to take on cleaning and washing for me and was always a best friend. She became Verger for many years. For a short time she later lived in our house in Boley Close whilst her flat was being renovated, and would babysit the children for an occasional night out when we were in Lichfield. One of the young people (she was just 19) was Judith Cotterill and after sitting Oxford entrance, she went to work at Dovedale House and I would go up and spend time off with her. I suppose that we ‘went out’ for about twelve months, but not long after her starting at Warwick University I knew that there was no future in it. But she and her family were unfailingly kind and generous to me. One of the few more elderly couples when I arrived was Blanche and John Walker. John died very soon after my arrival (I think he had been verger at some point in the past) and Blanche was a delight to get to know better. She started to be seriously ill and accompanying her to death was a privilege. One of the people I’d been taken to meet on my weekend’s visit to the parish was John Hadley and his dying wife. John had been Gen Sec of a small Insurance company that was based in Lichfield and came out of a pentecostalist stable. He somehow had decided that St Chad’s should be his base and encouraged John Widdas in his own pilgrimage. He was a gifted speaker and had huge faith, but also, I thought, a real pain in that anything that didn’t have his emphasis or style was deemed unscriptural. His influence gave me some anxious moments as I had to question the spiritual and theological understanding behind my own ministry. Thankfully there were other theological influences too, particulary those exercised by Sue Brough, Shirley Wheeley and Brenda Hoddinott which whom I found myself much more in tune. Sue and her husband John became fast friends, introduced me to Viv and we have maintained contact ever since. Sue is one of Catherine’s godparents. Another school of churchmanship (‘straight CofE’) was represented by one of the churchwardens, Lewis Leeds. I was often invited there for breakfast on a Sunday between services. His daughter Sue and her finance Andrew Hall were the first couple I married and I am godfather to their son Nicholas. Mary and Eddie Salt were the salt of the earth and I deeply appreciated being included in the family events of the Singletons, Rainsfords, Prices and Claytons. It was a very social time as well as everything else! On my first Christmas Day, I went home to eat lunch with my Mum and then just had to go to bed for the rest of the day, I was so knackered!

My stipend at this time was £1100, plus another £150 or so from the ‘Whitsun Offering’, with housing provided. First curacies are now (2010) meant to last for four years but then the pattern was a ‘title’ post and then a second curacy that carried more responsibility. John was asked to receive another Deacon in 1978 and so from the beginning of that year I was looking for another job. Viv Hyde and I had announced our engagement at Easter 1978 and were planning to get married in the October half-term. Looking back at it now, it seems incredibly soon but an immense amount of experience had been gained and I felt that I was ready for it. I looked first at a second curacy at Berkswich in Stafford, but didn’t like the state of the house that was offered and there was no readiness to improve it. So was happier when the Bishop asked me to go to look at Bilbrook and to meet the Vicar, the Revd Gilbert Smith. He had become Vicar of Codsall whilst I was still at the Primary School there. This time I was happy when all agreed that I should go.

About twenty years later, I was walking past St Mary’s House in Lichfield and a young man who was doing some gardening stopped me and said hadn’t I been the curate at St Chad’s. ‘Yes’, I said, ‘but a long time ago’. He said: ‘You took the funeral of my father’. I had no recollection of the family at all – he certainly couldn’t have been more than about 7 at the time. Sometimes, it seems that you touch people’s lives at a depth you can’t imagine.