24th April 2020

Welcome to this week’s edition of Hull Minster’s online resource for keeping in touch.

Over the last few weeks, we have tried to highlight an aspect of the Minster’s life, to tell the story of a group or person as a way of encouraging one another.  In this edition we are going to explore the world of digital communications, and to hear from Tom White, our Digital Communications Officer, who is squirreled away at his parents’ home in the beautiful Northamptonshire village of Kings Cliffe.

I remember the place well from my time as Suffragan Bishop in the Diocese of Peterborough; like many Northamptonshire communities, its older houses are built from a particularly colourful stone, giving a golden and rather sunny outlook even on a dull day. 

Kings Cliffe is not only to be noted for this or for Tom its present-day son; on my regular visits there after 2002 I learned about William Law who lived there in the 18th century.  Law wrote, in 1729, a famous book which is still in print, called “A Serious Call to a Devout and Holy Life”.  It contains this famous line, reproduced here in the original language of the book, “he therefore is a devout man who lives no longer to his own will, or the way and spirit of the world, but to the sole will of God, who considers God in everything, who serves God in everything, who makes all the parts of his common life parts of piety by doing everything in the name of God”. 

It was pretty inspiring stuff and challenged many in his own time, not least Hull’s most famous son William Wilberforce, who was greatly influenced by Law’s writings.  Piety (or spirituality as we might these call it these days), rather than isolating people from the demands of daily living, can empower a lifelong passion for the good of others.

As part of this role, it’s very unusual to be focusing on what it actually involves. Normally, I’m the one behind the camera, away creating graphics or writing video scripts in the office, and the person pressing ‘publish’ on our online content! Instead, I’m remote working from King’s Cliffe as Frank mentioned. So, I hope that this insight will give you an idea of what goes on behind the scenes to create some of the content which you will have seen over the past couple of weeks.

As you can imagine, we have had to rapidly increase our online output of content to help continue the normality and rhythm of life in the Minster which has brought about some challenges but a lot more good news. For those who are not on social media, we have a big reach within the city with over 10,000 people following us across our different social media accounts, with of course many of those not having a faith but associating the Minster as a ‘home’ in the city. We’re making the most of this great opportunity to share some of the Good News of Jesus with them and we’re seeing encouragement with people who would not normally attend church tuning in to watch on a Sunday and engagement with posts throughout the week.

With the isolation in place it has also meant most of the ministry team have now learnt how to become videographers! Making this content is a team effort, and thanks and praise goes out to those who are helping to film and edit parts of the service. They go unseen and a huge amount of effort goes into filming the videos, making sure the lighting and sound are right, adding words over the top of songs to get it across to me and assemble it into a service. A normal Sunday service online involves just as many people as one where meet in person!

As we continue to release more content in this season of uncertainty, we are striving to be able to resource you. One of the things I am most excited about with ‘online church’ is how easy it is to invite someone. People are able to access our church and our community without having to step into the church. They can explore it at a time suitable for them and at their own pace. I’d therefore encourage you to be sharing the content we produce or use it as inspiration to share your faith across social media. If you go through your friends list on Facebook, how many are Christians? All it takes is the simple click of a share button and you have opened up your entire friends list to see what being part of the Minster is. People are open to exploring faith and are interested to learn more about Jesus, so I’d say that if you’ve not been confident before in talking about faith to try it now!

I hope that you are able to make use of the resources which we are producing across our platforms and if you’re not already I’d ask that you follow us using the links below on social media to stay updated throughout the week with everything we are doing to continue being a community.

This Sunday is the third Sunday of Easter and here is the Alternative Collect:

Risen Christ,

You filled your disciples with boldness and fresh hope;

Strengthen us to proclaim your risen life

And fill us with your peace,

To the Glory of God the Father. Amen.

The reading (Luke 24 verses 13 – 35) is the famous story of the disciples walking on the road to Emmaus and we will be reflecting on that in our online service this Sunday morning.  If ever there were people “filled with boldness and fresh hope” it was those two travellers.  I do hope you can join us for the service and for the other activities which we are maintaining on line during these days of limited movement and restricted meeting.

How important prayer is during these days in which we are living – to aid our prayers we are attaching our Monthly Prayer Diary which includes a thought-provoking reflection from Mandy Richardson.  We hope you find this regular publication helps you with a different daily focus for prayer.

As always, we are delighted to receive feedback, suggestions and ideas and you can leave a message on the Minster’s answerphone – 01482 224460 – or send an email to office@hullminster.org and we would love to hear from you.

Frank White
Interim Minister