Reverend Guilford Planning Motivation Report

Motivation for Planning ApplicatfowERDmake alterations to Christ Church, Laxey.

16 Oct 2008

• Background - Discussions began some 3 years ago about how to use our church buildings to improve our pastoral work in the village of Laxey. Our vision is to place Christ Church back at the centre of the community and make it more accessible to and usable by this community.
• The Problem - Our problem is that our two church buildings, we believe, are unsuitable for their correct purpose in the 21st Century. Our Church Hall is in very poor structural condition and has become quite a burden on our already stretched finances. However more important than this, in our opinion, the Church Hall situated where it is, away from the centre of village life, is in the wrong place to fulfil our vision of accessibility. Christ Church itself is situated in the centre of the village, but lacks facilities. It has no disabled access, no toilet facilities and nowhere to boil a kettle. This obviously inhibits our use of the building and our current usage amounts to just two and half hours each week.
• The Challenge - The challenge then was how to turn this around. The provision of disabled access and toilet facilities are paramount. The nearest toilet available to us is situated in the railway station and although the railway management is very cooperative, for which we are very grateful, the station will not be open in the winter and therefore even these toilets will not be available for the use of our visitors and congregation.
• The Vision - It seemed sensible to us, then, to offer our church hall for sale, which would both reduce the burden on our finances and provide the funds with which to make Christ Church far more usable. The changes that we propose making to the church will not reduce the capacity. It will provide us with toilet and kitchen facilities and will provide comfortable and adaptable space to use for meetings, coffee mornings, Sunday School etc. This, we believe, will enable us to use the church building on a far more regular basis. Our vision would be that we could perhaps open the church on a daily basis, have in effect a parish office in the centre of the village, so that the community can call in and visit us when they have a need. In our opinion this would mean that our property would become asset rather than burden.
• Reordering - The other changes, which we propose making to the inside of the church building, concern the use of the building for worship. Worship has changed considerably in recent decades and the whole idea is to make it more inclusive. New technology enables the priest to reach her/his congregation with many different resources and the reordering we are proposing takes all this into consideration. Most priests would prefer to face her/his congregation during the celebration of Holy Communion; this is why we are proposing moving the altar forward, so that the priest may stand behind it. To accommodate this we need to move the sanctuary rail forward. Traditionally the Baptismal Font has been situated at the door of the church to symbolically suggest entry into the church family, which baptism signifies. However many churches today baptise children at the front of the church, so that the whole congregation can see and be included in the ceremony. We propose to situate the font on a raised area at the front of the church. By slightly moving the pulpit we can clear the proposed site of the font with minimal loss of capacity. We also propose moving the site of our present PA system to the raised area, where we can also incorporate a screen and projector.
• General Comment - We understand that our proposals are not universally popular. We would seek to point out, however, that Church Authorities, the Parochial Church Council and the majority of the congregation are in agreement with them. We believe that by far the majority of the objections that have been received are from non-churchgoers. Not that we think that only churchgoers are entitled to an opinion. We firmly believe that Christ

Church belongs to the community and that each individual is a potential churchgoer. However, to this point we have not been able to get our arguments across to those outside the church and this is the point really, again we have to make ourselves more accessible. We readily admit that we have a responsibility to maintain our church building, its history and tradition. We have to, though, also remember the reason it exists. That reason is to serve its people and we have to attempt to maintain a balance between these two responsibilities. We believe that our application reflects this balance.

Report prepared by Reverend John Guilford, priest in temporary charge of the parishes of All Saints, Lonan \& Christ Church, Laxey.

Copied to Archdeacon The Venerable Brian Smith and to The Wardens of Christ Church.