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A warm welcome to our new vicar Eddie Smith

Saturday, 22 July 2023 19:20

Rectory Ramblings
 
“A generation goes, and a generation comes, but the earth remains forever”. (Ecclesiastes 1:4)
 
If you were attracted to this article by the belief that your new Rural Dean was about to impart some golden nuggets about his latest good country walk, then I’m sorry. By “ramblings” I am leaning more towards a random set of musings that may be loosely connected to a central theme. Such as, for example, the word “settled”. The question I have been asked most often over the past few weeks is “Have you settled in?” And that is an interesting question to which my most common answer has been “Well we are in. I’m not sure about settled yet” Dictionary definitions for the word settle include: to come to rest; to make orderly; to fix permanently; and to sink to the bottom! Ask me again in a few month’s time, which of these four definitions I have settled on (sorry, I couldn’t resist it). Jesus said “Come to me all you with heavy burdens and I will give you rest”, but that is rest from burdens that are too much to bear. When he called his disciples to follow him he did not promise them a restful time, instead he called them out of their comfort zone to do something different: “Follow me, and I will make you fishers of people”. 
 
After serving in three different benefices encompassing fourteen parishes, not counting my new group of five parishes in King’s Cliffe, I have found following Jesus to be an exciting and rewarding adventure but certainly not restful. So with experience of, and a continuing passion for, agricultural and multi-parish rural ministry, I now find myself beginning again with another five parishes in the King’s Cliffe Benefice. I did think I was settled in the Wymersley Benefice just the other side of Wellingborough, at least until my retirement. But it seems that God had other plans for me. Experience should have taught me he usually does when I start to feel “too settled”. I still see some of the farmers from my last benefice at the livestock market in Thrapston where I work as a volunteer chaplain twice a month, but I have been called to exercise my main ministry here, for a time, in new pastures and with new flocks.    
 
We might have finished unpacking boxes in our new home but as the new vicar of King’s Cliffe and rural dean of Oundle the hard work now begins, as I learn about my own parishes and those of the wider deanery, and get to grips with some of the challenges that face us all in the months and years ahead. It feels good to be here and I look forward to meeting and working with you, but let’s not get too settled, we have exciting work to do in bringing God’s love and God’s Kingdom into this corner of Northamptonshire.  

Revd Eddie