Vision/Action

Parish Vision Process
During 2008, we started a Parish Vision Process, looking at how we could move forward in our parish and grow in faith for the future.

Our Vision
We have identified six areas of our Christian life, and have begun, through the PCC, to work on those. They are:

Although most of the small Dales farms no longer produce milk, on those that still do the black-and-white Friesian cow is now the predominant breed.
Prior to the middle of the last century, however,
Dairy Shorthorns were almost the only dairy cattle to be seen on these traditionally-farmed holdings where the regular main income might come from just 12-15 cows.

The
Dairy Shorthorn
and its “kin” breed, the Beef Shorthorn,
go back hundreds of years and are the only breed of cattle native to the Dales.
They are all coloured red, white or roan
(a mixture of both - see above)
and are ideally suited to the harder conditions of the Dales.
They are docile, hardy, will happily out-winter and produce high quality milk mainly from grass.
In the latter half of the 20th century, the Friesian cow with its milk yield of up to twice that of the Shorthorn gradually replaced almost all these gentle animals, not only in the Dales but nation-wide. The result was that in 1978, the Dairy Shorthorn was put on the critical list of the
Rare Breeds Survival Trust.
Today, with the increased demand for local and sustainable products, it looks as though the Shorthorn breed may yet have a revival .

The first focus was Prayer.
These have been the areas of growth:

Prayer Groups and Prayer Accompaniment
Small Pilgrim Places (Holy Trinity, Low Row is a member of this national network)
Lay led intercessions in Services
Cursillo
Day Retreats

Keld Resource Centre

Learning more about the Bible was our next focus and we worked on the following areas:
Pew Bibles
Lectio Divina
Workshops on “Reading the Bible in Church”
Lent Meetings on the theme of “Learning more about the Bible”

Looking forward -
We are now working on the theme of Growing our Christian Discipleship, which will lead us into a broad range of activities in the parish.

As a basis for this we are using “The Radical Disciple” by John Stott.

We are working on:
A Stewardship Project, thinking about the gifts and talents that we have to offer, as well as our money and other resources.

Living Well and Dying Well – helping us and others to think in a Christian way about dying and issues around the end of life, and the practicalities of planning one’s funeral.

Creation Care
Our Lent Course in 2011 was based on the book, Paint the Church Green, encouraging us to think about Christian responsibility for God’s world.
At our Annual Church Meeting we heard from A Rocha, a Christian environmental organisation that works around the world.
Grinton Church is working on a project to conserve and celebrate their resident bat population.
Our church committees are thinking about how their churchyards could be used as conservation areas.

Drystone walls
are one of the defining features of the Dales landscape.
Like grey ribbons they meander along the valleys and stride across the open fells and moorland. They enclose fields and define the boundary between holdings
Most of the long, straight walls on the higher ground date from the Acts of Enclosure and are the result of lines drawn on maps by the surveyors who implemented the Acts. However difficult the route designated by these latter day “civil servants”, the owner of the land was required to follow it with the result that walls were strung up steep hillsides, across peaty bogs and over streams that became raging torrents in winter.
A well-made wall actually consists of two faces in-filled with small stones, bound together by “through-stones” A good wall is said to “outlive” its builder but they do collapse eventually. The action of frost, burrowing rabbits and leaping, errant sheep all cause wall failures.