’God’s gift to this beautiful, damaged world’

“I GREW up in what was by then an increasingly multi-cultural Birmingham, child of a teacher, in a house which had severe damp problems, but lots of books. I remember being present, aged six, at the dedication of a new plot for the rebuilding of Carrs Lane Church in the city centre, to which my parents had moved when their local church closed.

“I remember the dramatic ruins of its great Victorian predecessor;…the pulpit amidst devastation in the demolition… and the fun with static electricity from the plastic carpets in the new building. It’s a conident church culture that has since all but passed away; a feeling of conidence in a rebuilding, and of a ‘non-conformist’ identity which could stand up to a stufy establishment, in politics and in faith.”

The Rev David Coleman is the recently appointed Chaplain to Eco-Congregation Scotland. He’s recalling his more traditional roots in his hometown of Birmingham.

“The congregation looked back with pride to the church’s prominent historic role in the transformation of the welfare of citizens through the Civic Gospel and overt engagement in Liberal politics.it had been the stage, during the nineteenth century, for ‘great preachers’ of congregationalism, such as John Angell James and Robert W Dale, who had been instrumental in the founding of Mansield College Oxford, where I was, in due course, to train for ministry.

“Transformative, for a child still vulnerable to the self-perpetuating propaganda of WW2 in comics and popular culture, was a church exchange with people of Zweibrücken in the Pfalz in Germany. The church prepared with German language lessons, and I came too, enjoying a German child’s Easter, and being received with great compassion by our hosts, whilst struggling with how kind and generous people could have been led astray by Nazism. War could not be an answer to anything.

“I became more sympathetic to the spiritual paciism of my father and grandfather, who as Christadelphians, had been conscientious objectors.”

In spite of that, as happens with many young people, David found himself at a distance from the traditional church as he grew up.

“Nonetheless, without antagonism, seeing little relevance in the well-meaning ‘museum’ that churches seemed to be, I drifted away in my teens from church involvement, feeling drawn back after my first degree and being invited to ‘do stuf’ for the church (desktop publishing, graphics, recording the choir) after my Electronic Graphics Postgraduate diploma.

“By then Carrs Lane had not just one, but two ministers who were both members of the Iona Community, and regularly took groups for relective experiences on the Island. I was able to be around in the church without being pursued or pressed as to the state or nature of my faith and that was good. The Rev Murdoch Mackenzie, suggested my artistic abilities might be used ‘to preach the Gospel’. Murdoch was right: I have since supplied hundreds of relective photos and some writing, mostly for the Iona Community, as well as developing a distinctive approach to multimediaintegrated worship on a regular basis, not just for special events. I dressed Iona Abbey (and myself) in camoulage to relect on Jesus, welcomed by branches and nailed to a tree, this last Palm Sunday.

“Given the nature of my work as chaplain, pretty well every service I’m involved in is a special event: like the evangelists of the nineteenth century, I always aim to make a conversion-level diference with writing and preaching, and the visual side of this is vitally important.”

David enjoys experimenting with diferent ways of worship and getting out of the building is important to him.

“Memorable, immersive worship experiences ‘work’ best. And that needs a collaborative approach, to push boundaries and show change is possible. For the Pentecost service before I left Greenock, we celebrated Communion at Whitelee Windfarm, where sustainable energy, wind, Spirit, power, conservation and recreation all come powerfully together. It was uplifting and exciting, and minds are changed that way.

“I felt free, at Carrs Lane,” he says. “And it was there, one night, as I looked over the sleeping city from the church roof, I met a tipping point, and resolved to seek Conirmation and Church membership, as well as sign up to visit Iona. The momentum continued with an unmistakeable experience of call to ministry.

Memorable, immersive worship experiences ‘work’ best. And that needs a collaborative approach, to push boundaries and show change is possible.

“I asked the minister, the Rev Mitchell Bunting, who helped me begin the awful and arduous selection process. I then visited Iona for the first time, and, transformatively, spent the late summer as a volunteer housekeeper.

“I am still unconvinced of the need for the selection process to have been as horrible as it was, though for something which involves the huge resources dedicated to ministry training, I understand rigour. I hope I do not ever feel called to inlict pain for the sake of process, which is what it felt like, on the receiving end, whilst also trusting the immense integrity of those involved.

“I remember one personality test, clearly designed for businessmen, suggested that though I was mentally stable, I should acquire a grey suit and wear ‘proper’ shoes. I later took pleasure in incinerating the absurd document. Discovering and loving what it means to be yourself is part of what you bring to any ministry. Denying that disrespects God.”

“I spent a year in a retreat house and three months at Iona, before beginning four years of training at Oxford, including an internship year in the poorest housing scheme in South Wales, set in the hills of the Rhondda, and just oppressed by poverty. The church, in the centre of the scheme, did amazing work.

“At Oxford, I was the youngest in my year and very taken with the then fashionable ‘Creation Spirituality’ movement led by the likes of Matthew Fox and Thomas Berry. I had begun to encounter this as a volunteer on Iona, when J Philip Newell was warden. I still feel that I learned as much about liturgy and worship as a volunteer moving chairs and candles around for Philip as I did at college.

“On a tiny budget, and on my own during holidays whilst training, I found it nourishing to spend time in wilderness places: not to ‘conquer’ a landscape or a mountain, but to become part of it. Seeing more on foot or by bike, than by motorised transport gave me a profound love of nature.

“The college did give some encouraging space to my continuing exploration of artistic expression, in a ‘Celtic’ mode. As part of my Iona Community membership project, I assembled an exhibition of art on recycled materials.

“They were worried when, in ‘spirituality’ class, I described myself as ‘the resident arty pagan!”

“My final dissertation, on the spirituality of St Columba, in which I developed the idea of the Communion of Creation (as a parallel to the Communion of Saints) continues to be of real value in my day-to-day work as Environmental Chaplain.

“I also began to recognise and denounce the regrettable fallacy, current in some Christian spirituality, of the assumption that Closeness to the Earth, (and acknowledging in other creatures something like the status of personhood) is a characteristic alien to Christianity, to be avoided for fear of syncretism and idolatry.

“We share citizenship of the planet with other creatures, and indeed, with many spiritualities. It should not frighten us.

“Our urgent spiritual need is an appropriate partnership with God and the whole Earth, against which our species has waged war, and on which we so directly depend.”

It was on Iona that David met his wife, Zam. “I met Zam Walker on Iona, where her Edinburgh Episcopal congregation went for retreat in 1995 during my ‘hallowing’ as an Iona Community member. I was ordained and inducted to serve two URC and one Welsh Presbyterian congregations in North Wales, which I could do by bike, as the village church of Bagillt was only three miles from Flint.

“We married in St Columba’s by the Castle Edinburgh in 1996, and Zam found work supporting ex-ofenders in north Wales.

“Our son Taliesin was born in 1999. He was named after the legendary creationaware Welsh bard who could sing before he could talk, which turned out to be the case, as his speech was delayed, but he sang along as a baby in Iona services. His autistic spectrum condition led to a consuming interest in dinosaurs, which later encouraged me and Zam to develop ‘Dinosaur Sunday’ – looking at the awe and wonder appropriate to the great age of the Earth, and the implications for faith and humanity of evolution – and more recently, the threat of extinction.

“Melangell, our daughter, arrived in 2001, named after the Welsh princess who led an arranged marriage to set up a community of prayerful healing women in the Berwyn Mountains, caring for Creation and for people. We had discovered her story when invited to represent the church at the ‘Sacred Lands’ millennium project the year before.

“After breast cancer in 2003, Zam trained for URC ministry and job-shared with me in Brighton and Greenock from 2007 until her death in 2016.

“I have no doubt that she would be as excited and motivated with the work of the Chaplaincy as I am. We shared life and calling: the Greenock congregation and I supported her in continuing work until the last fortnight of her life, when she was just able to pronounce the blessing for the Easter Sunday service in 2016.

“After Zam’s death, and after eight years in Greenock, with continuing involvement with the Iona Community, I was feeling deeply the need for a new start. I had been pleased, because it sounded like a ‘nice thing’ that my colleague from my year in college, the Rev Trevor Jamison, had served for five years as environmental chaplain, but the accelerating climate crisis already made this special category ministry, resourced jointly by URC, Church of Scotland and Scottish Episcopal Church, with involvement from Christian Aid, SCIAF and other agencies, more than necessary. I applied, and was delighted to move to Edinburgh to begin last year, privileged to beneit in my work from the immense knowledge and experience of the Church of Scotland’s Climate Change Oicer, with oice space on the 4th loor of 121.

“Eco-Congregation remains a very small charity, though we have a sizeable network. Staf and volunteers passionately bring whatever gifts they have, as well as following job descriptions. The Chaplain first of all aims to visit and encourage local congregations or networks, leading and contributing to worship in the context of the various traditions. The job involves being both ‘Jeremiah’ (being open about the tragedy of extinction and climate crisis) and ‘Barnabas’, encouraging, rather than judging the commitment of grassroots Christians. I come in and point out how the ‘end of the world (as we have known it) is nigh’, but at close of worship, people are usually upbeat, thoughtful, and encouraged.

“The very broad-based network of Christian congregations that now makes up 450 ‘registered’ congregations with ECS is of great signiicance in the spiritual life of the nation. The context of climate crisis uncovers the deep, existing, relevance of our faith to the partnership of God the Delegator with wider Creation. We are not re-inventing the Church, but digging up the gold in the field of a spiritual tradition.

“Christianity engaged with the environment becomes un-tamed: rediscovering the loving militancy and craftiness of a people without coercive power, though relying on the power of God.

“Out of loyalty to God and the wider Church, Eco-Congregations find the conidence to stick their heads above the parapet and disagree with ‘business as usual’ for the way the church deals with resources. The gloomy preoccupation of Western churches with decline and maintenance has become a trivial luxury in the face of what lies ahead environmentally.

“For the sake of the Church, as much as the planet, the Eco-Congregation movement needs every encouragement to grow.

“Eco-Congregations are, potentially, the ‘yeast in the dough’ of the church. Our passionate ‘rebellion’ seeks to strengthen the mission and integrity of the churches, whilst avoiding the blame game, despair, and division of some environmental campaigning.

“The issues of ‘our Common Home, the Earth’ bring together all the previous good causes, of poverty, fair trade, gender, justice and peace, rather than replacing them, for as in the Bible, it is the God of Justice who is recognised as the Creator.

“Do not worry about tomorrow”, says Jesus, “You’ve got enough on your plate for today.” And so we have. And it’s very, very urgent.”

David’s message is clear.

“I am in conversation about providing an environmental context so that the leaders of the churches will be equipped to help face a very diferent world. “But the commitment and courage of chaplaincy in lay folk everywhere is equally important.

“If I can say one thing, it’s this – You are, each of you - God’s gift to this beautiful, damaged, world. Don’t forget that.”

The context of climate crisis uncovers the deep, existing, relevance of our faith to the partnership of God the Delegator with wider Creation. We are not re-inventing the Church, but digging up the gold in the ield of a spiritual tradition.