Celebrations to mark 250th birthday of Welsh hymn writer
The celebration of Ann Griffiths will take place on 12 July at 7pm in Neuadd Llanfihangel-yng-Ngwnfa Village Hall at 7pm.
Read moreRural Ministry
Supporting Rural Churches
Welcome to the Rural Ministry section of the website. Here you will find information about the development of a rural strategy and resources to support rural churches and communities.
A list of organisations who work to support rural communities can be found here.
Samaritans Suicide Prevention Communications Guide
Samaritans have published a new Suicide Prevention Communications Guide, which covers useful tips for developing safe and informed suicide prevention messages for all those communicating about this topic. It helps improve people’s understanding of issues like contributing risk factors, how to spot when someone may be struggling to cope, and how to start a potentially lifesaving conversation. Access to the guide is here: https://media.samaritans.org/documents/Suicide_prevention_communications_guide_DIGITAL.pdf
HOLDING THE FARMING COMMUNITY IN OUR PRAYERS
News of farmers demonstrating may sound like a group of militants just stamping their feet, but that really isn’t the case. The average income on Welsh farms is around £15,000/yr – which means a number of those farms must be earning far less than that! Also, those incomes are likely to drop as the cost of production continues to increase. Few Welsh farms can now afford to employ staff, so farmers are regularly working a 60+ hour week, and for little financial reward.
Agriculture as an industry is one of the most affected by the weather – great when it’s warm and dry, but devasting when crops are flooded, or livestock drowned or buried in snow. “Bovine TB is continuing to put an immense financial and mental health strain on farmers in Wales, with the cost of the disease to each farm business averaging more than £25,000 in the past 12 months alone.” (Farmers Weekly 17/08/23). Whilst most of the population have little trouble connecting to the internet and social media, farmers are often further isolated by poor or intermittent broadband and phone signals.
Now try and sense the feeling of farmers as they hear of WG proposals which they believe are unworkable. In the main, farmers have always been ecologically minded and keen conservationists, they fully understand working with nature. So, in principle the WG’s “Sustainable Farming Scheme (SFS) – Keeping Farmers Farming” might sound good. However, to be told that to gain any financial support from the scheme farmers will have to devote 10% of their land to trees, means that that 10% will no longer be part of their productive land or their income stream. Anecdotal evidence suggests that the National Food Reserve is already low, and it also suggests that the scheme may mean 5500 farm jobs losses – almost double the loss from the steel industry!
Approximately 85% of this wonderful country of Wales is rural, and it’s kept beautiful by those who work the land, so please do pray that we ‘Keep Farmers Farming’. Thank you.
Revd Tim Clement, Diocesan Rural Life Advisor, Diocese of Monmouth
Rural Affairs Advisor
The post of Rural Affairs Advisor is currently vacant. For any rural ministry matters, please email the Director of Transforming Ministry, the Revd Mike Haslam.
Planning for Mission and Growth
Planning for Mission and Growth is a bilingual tool to plan a strategy for growth. It can be summed up with the three questions:
- From where are we starting?
- To where do we want to go?
- What is the best way to get there?
Download and use the document opposite to aid your planning.
Prayers for the Rural Church
The Booklet opposite was shared with rural churches and is being used as the basis of prayer in communities.
Copies can be downloaded here.
A large print, Word document version, is available here.
Map of Rurality
The map below shows the different types of rurality across the diocese: from rural towns to rural villages, and sparse areas of dispersed settlement. The categories of rurality included on the map are those used by the Welsh Government.
