The Link is published monthly at 40p (Senior Citizens 35p), and we deliver free within the parish and post copies (at the reader's expense) to those who request it. Please contact us if you would like a free copy for a trial period.
July 2006, Page 2.
Index of articles:
by subject,
by date.
In this issue:
(July 2006)
Ring-O-Bells?
WEB Cluster,
Ethics,
Building work,
The Lord's call.
Is the WEB cluster born yet?
|
A couple of days after last month’s issue went to press we heard that the Bishop had accepted a modified version of the Deanery Synod’s “Pastoral Plan” for Calverley Deanery. It groups the churches together into “clusters” and allocates 12 clergy around them as in the box below. However, it says that further thought has to be given to Laisterdyke, and so declines to put it into the northern group which the Deanery Synod had recommended.
From our point of view, it therefore looks as if we are to work with St James Bolton and St Cuthbert Wrose, and we’ll probably be doing that in due course. This seems to be the birth of WEB - Wrose, Eccleshill and Bolton.
There are, however, two reasons why we are waiting a bit, and not leaping straight into action over the summer.
First, until the Laisterdyke position is cleared up, we won’t know that the Calverley-Idle-Greengates-Thorpe-Edge cluster really will be a cluster by itself. And, unfortunately, most people think that two clergy for the four churches is too few. In the short term this is being solved: Suzanne Irvine, the curate at Wrose, has been seconded to Thorpe Edge. But in the long term it may mean that another parish has to be added to this cluster. And that other parish would have to be Wrose or Eccleshill.
Second, there’s a diocesan idea around to form a new arrangement with all the parishes around the cathedral working together, and a meeting of such parishes has been called for September. And Bolton is one of the parishes affected.
Either of these could wreck the idea of the “WEB” cluster. Maybe it isn’t quite born yet, and it’s a bit early to be giving it a Thanksgiving and Blessing?
John Hartley