Articles - Miscellaneous

Scargill Weekend

In July over 70 members of St Edmund’s enjoyed a weekend at Scargill House in the Yorkshire Dales.  The theme of the weekend was “Listening to God, Listening to each other”.  During the 10am Eucharist on Sunday 7^th September three people who had attended the weekend gave their impressions to the wider congregation.  Kay Graham who had initiated the weekend and masterminded the housekeeping arrangements, Gwyneth Spurr a long standing member of the congregation and Sophie Marhsall one of our teenagers all gave moving accounts.  We are pleased to print below Sophie’s account of the weekend.

I knew I really wanted to go to Scargill - the last time I went on a parish weekend was when I was about 4 though I can't remember much about it.   I like the landscape of the Yorkshire dales though so I knew I'd probably like the place.  I was a bit unsure of how I would feel when I arrived as all I knew about the other young people that went to Scargill were basic things like which school they went to and what they were called.  

When we first arrived it sounded as if Hannah and I were going to be sleeping in a wing on our own and I was disappointed about that as I was looking forward to getting to know the other young people in church a bit better but after spending just an hour at Scargill I felt very welcomed and accepted.  I got along with everyone and it was so good being around other people who have faith and who are around my age.  

Through the day we went into groups where we discussed such things as what we got out of the church and why we went there.  We all agreed that church gave us a community to be part of. St Edmunds has a lot of groups and activities but sometimes some of us felt that we were involved in some things because we thought we ought to be rather than because we wanted to be.   This meant that sometimes we weren't able to be as enthusiastic about things.  

We talked about some of the problems we had at St Edmunds.  Things like worship feeling like a performance in front of an audience and worrying about things going wrong.  We talked about the congregation being a very narrow group of people - what I mean by this is that most of us live in a multi-racial world but church is very white and middle class and that feels strange to us.  

There are not many people who are young adults in church, probably because they all go off to college or something but it means that the young people of my age don't have any role models.  There aren't many sports or social events either.We had ideas about things that would make church more lively such as bands and gospel choirs! Also ideas about youth group outings and meals.  We also thought there we needed to get a better sense of community and to be more connected with the local community so that we could share the good news of Jesus gospel with other people. We thought that we could use different kinds of material for some of the services too and go to plays and other events.

In the evenings we spent a lot of time in the "quiet room" which gave us all chance to socialise and talk to each other about things. Then in the early hours in the morning we finally got off to bed! The adults went to bed ages before us but we had a lot to talk about.  

In the end we needn't have worried about being stuck on our own in one of the wings of the house because most people ended up in just a couple of rooms.  It's fun sleeping on the floor with a lot of others when you feel a part of things.

I enjoyed everything about Scargill a look forward to returning to Scargill with church in the future.

© St Edmund's Church, Roundhay - Charity Number 1131904