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The double rainbow over Salcombe during the weekend seemed to really touch people. A moment of serendipity perhaps. We had a beautiful wedding in Salcombe for Mark Goddie and Jane Tyler, who have given so much of themselves generously to the local community over the years. The rainbow felt like the Divine hand was matching our thanks to them.  It was really surprising because the weather forecast was a bit 50/50 and yet the weekend here turned out to be dry. Mark and Jane had planned after the noon wedding to walk all the way through town to the Winking Prawn at North Sands. I wondered on Friday whether this would be possible considering how it poured down. Yet, dry it was, and we where able to meet them at the beach with laughter and Champagne. 

Does God bless a community in a special way? Can there be places of grace that help us recharge and recover? There are many Biblical instances of this and the Hebrew nation seems to particularly have this God given mission, to be a light to the nations.

I have lived all over the place in Britain. Sometimes, I have been placed in churches where the locality is brutal and the landscape soulless. I think of the Stanhope Estate in Ashford which was a large social housing estate in Ashford that lost its way when the rail industry stopping making trains there. It became a scene of urban decay. It even had the infamy of being near the meat slaughter houses that first detected CJD in the 1990s. The first priest of the new church very suddenly and dramatically left for an Alcohol recovery programme.

Stanhope  was grim. Some nicknamed it the 'No Hope Estate'. And yet, there was laughter and joy. Many there lived heroic lives. The local Primary School pulled off some fabulous OFSTEDs. But, I could see that there was beyond this an uphill struggle to build something out of that urban decay, to construct good and godly civilisation. People lived in fear. It did not feel safe going out at night. Families squashed into terrible social housing flats raised the temperature of bad feelings. There was little to do for teens and young people and there was no sea or sand like we have here in Salcombe. The Garden of Kent was a distant dream. Few of the jigsaw pieces that make for a flourishing community where there.



Frances and I feel blessed to part of Salcombe. For the first couple of years we felt guilty to be in such a paradise. My hope is that this place can continue to assemble all the jigsaw pieces to be a good, godly, caring community. Maybe we are a bit of a throw back to a bygone age but that would be no bad thing? At my induction 11 years ago my sister-in-law laughed that the congregation seemed a bit like an episode of Midsummer Murders or Cluedo. That quaintness is something rather special and we need to nurture it so that as many can come under our canopy.

Also, I pray daily that the parish church is at the heart of this project - like an engine powering the whole town.


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