On Tuesday 10^th June, 8-9pm we will be having a livestreamed Community Praise and Prayer in the Chapel which will be available for you to journey with us online and take part through the chat comments.
https://youtube.com/live/YyoWObwXYug

In this Praise and Prayer we will be thanking God for his generous provision and we will be looking forward to the next Phase of our building project. We will also be thanking God for the ministry of Scargill and praying for new Community members to come and join the costly, yet joyful, adventure of Community life.

The Community are doing really well but we are stretched so please do continue to pray for us and our ongoing need for new members.  If you know of anyone you think would like to join Community for a short or long time, then do point them to our website here.

Below is Di’s latest reflection.  Di and I will be moving on from Scargill to ‘retirement’ next year in June 2026. We would very much value your prayers as there has been a lot of thought about succession planning. We will be advertising for a new Director in the late Summer into September with interviews in late November, and are praying that someone will join the adventure at Scargill at Easter time 2026, where there will be a transition period before we leave.

Di and I would value your prayers as we have yet to discern where God is calling us to live. Here is Di’s reflection. Enjoy!

As many of you will know Phil and I have begun thinking about where we might live when we retire; which seems to be quite a daunting task. Hence, I was pleased to find this painting ‘Springboard’ by Charlotte Evans who puts pools–and especially the ladders that go into them–front and centre of her delightful canvases’ (Jeff 2016 ‘Oh, By The Way’ blog). You see the task does feel a little like stepping off the top diving board!  But oh, the sheer joy that comes later.  

Now I only ever dived from the top board once or twice at the most but I still remember that slow climb up, then standing on the edge, trying not to look down, willing myself to dive because I knew what was to come – exhilaration, a sense of achievement, freedom – followed by the determination to reach air!   But if you don’t mind, we will not mention how the actual dives went, possibly ‘nil points!!’ I would though still love to have the courage to do it again.

Courage is required because stepping out in faith and doing something that God has called us to do can be scary. When you step out into the unknown to do what you believe is God’s will, He may not give you a blueprint to work with, you might need to make that decision to climb to the top board, not knowing how the dive will go – are you going to fall crisply into the water or not? Does it actually matter? No, not really, the only thing that really matters is are we following God?

Now that is the million-dollar question to which I do not have the answer. In fact, it often feels like I am wrestling with God repeatedly asking the questions When? Where? Why?  Maybe help can be found in the word ‘wrestling’ – wrestling can lead us to resting which in turn leads us to rest. Now that’s worth noting. Perhaps I need to remember to stop, and intentionally or un-intentionally create a space and invite God in. Not to wrestle with him but for a few minutes to still myself and quieten my restless mind and listen for the still, small voice of God and like Augustine of Hippo allow ‘God to speak to me in the great silence of the heart.’   

One of our prayers says:
’Like the sun that is far away, but still close at hand to warm us,
so God’s Spirit is always present around us. 
We live breath, work, rest and have our very being in You God.
Open now the windows of our souls so that we can see you.
And when we can see God, we are free to truly love.
Free to truly live.’                             
Amen

As we seek to understand out next adventure, Phil and I will walk in faith, which is one of the greatest treasures that we possess. Whether we make the wisest decisions or not I do not know but I do believe God will be walking alongside us all the way. As I have said many times before,’ if God is not elsewhere then that means God is here’; here with us now, today, and tomorrow – wherever that will be.

With love and prayers from Phil, Di and the Scargill Community

His reason for wanting to do this is his longing for people to know the wonder and joy of the saving love of Jesus. This was his agenda. Paul’s words are very challenging to us as he is asking us to put aside our own judgements, and sometimes the desire to show the error of others  – It would be so nice if others could have the same understanding as us!

Accepting others and journeying with them, to be their friend and their servant is at the centre of Paul’s heart. I love the way the Message version puts it: “I have voluntarily become a servant to any and all in order to reach a wide range of people: religious, non-religious, meticulous moralists, loose-living immoralists, the defeated and the demoralized – whoever…I’ve become just about every sort of servant there is in my attempts to lead those I meet into a God-saved life.”

Paul is not saying that by accepting people we are agreeing with them, but his longing is that through his life, in word and action, they would experience the love of Christ. This ability to accept people as they are comes from a growing understanding of our own identity in Christ, that we are his beloved, and that our lives are about showing others that they are God’s children and deeply loved. Our security is rooted in our relationship with Jesus.

We want this attitude to be at the heart of our life here at Scargill.  We want to accept people who come through our doors even though they may not fit into our tidy theological understanding and this can obviously be disturbing.

Yet, however uncomfortable it may sometimes feel, our hope is that we show the warmth and accepting love of Jesus.  I am sure many of us have been into churches where there have been such strong theological statements about God and life, that have felt so rigid and unyielding that it leaves very little space for dialogue or movement – It can be suffocating.

Scargill is about offering a safe place where the transformative love of God can do its mysterious work. As Ann Lamott says, ” God loves you exactly as you are and far too much to leave you as you are”.

Loving and accepting people for what they are can give us permission to adopt a different narrative if that is what is required.

The resurrection though gives us a another view –  a full tomb is a bit of a disaster! Empty is liberating and life giving, Jesus is risen, the tomb is empty, death has lost its sting, sin and satan are defeated. God has had the last laugh.

When thinking of the resurrection I think of Psalm 18:19; “He brought me out into a spacious place; he rescued me because he delighted in me”. Jesus is risen, the tomb is empty, life is to be lived in that spacious place, and we to are to leave our “tombs”, to leave them empty, and move into the spacious place that our generous God has won for us in the resurrected Jesus. It does take courage and a fair amount of trust. Our tombs whatever they may be, come with all sorts of names, unforgiveness and bitterness, fear, feeling useless just to mention a few.. We live in these tombs they become our home, they are familiar, and disturbingly comfortable. Scargill is about “lives shared, lives transformed” and hopefully with Jesus right at the centre he will loving lead us out of our caves that we have uncomfortably conformed to live in.

The challenge is to leave our tombs, and move into that spacious place, and breath in that resurrection air.

A blessed Easter to you all.

Sadly the towering trees which used to line the long driveway up to Scargill House have had to be cut down. At this melancholy time Scargill’s Director Phil Stone reflects on community, culture shock and how sometimes seeds need to die if they are going to live…

This last week has been sad and significant for Scargill. Our treasured avenue of horse chestnuts, which has been part of the landscape for the last 50 years and more, have become diseased and dangerous and have had come to down. Interesting and surprisingly what has been left is a new vista where the surrounding hills look even more inviting and attractive.

We are gradually becoming aware that the rhythm of life involves some small and some significant deaths so that God can bring new life and new beginnings. The rhythm of cross and resurrection are central to our lives. Scargill itself was resurrected, but not before it had to go through a death in 2008. The whole estate was up for sale and the long ministry of Scargill had finished. The place was dead. God though had not wiped the slate with either the place or the ministry.

When Di and I came to Scargill to grow and develop the ministry at the beginning of 2010, we were excited about the new adventure, but after a while I was wondering what we had done. From being a vicar in a large inner city parish, an area dean with responsibilities, I had come to Scargill where there was just a handful of us and 10,000 sheep. However lovely those sheep are, they are not great conversationalists, and regarded me as a sort of mint sauce threat (probably rightly so). After a couple of months of this I was feeling diminished, and well out of my depth. I went to see a wise friend who listened and shared a verse from John 12: “Very truly, I tell you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit”

Something had to die in me, for something new to come alive – never easy, often painful, but necessary. We can never jump to resurrection until we go through our own cross. Three years on Scargill is alive and thriving. The place is beginning to bear much fruit, but what is most significant is that I have deepened my understanding that I am loved by God, that I am called “his beloved”. Sometimes God has to strip away old securities so he can help us find again our true identity.

This week we begin Passiontide, with the invitation to journey with Jesus through Palm Sunday next Sunday, onto the Cross, and then onto the joy of Easter Sunday. As we journey with Jesus may we also know that he journeys with us as we face our crosses We need to ask him for courage.

This week new trees will be planted down our avenue at Scargill.

Our resurrection life continues.

The community at Scargill is always warmly welcoming new members and wishing a fond farewell to others as each person’s contract is staggered so that as we grow and change we can maintain consistency. If you are interested in spending some time as part of our community or know someone who might be interested then click here (especially if you/they have professional catering experience!). Feel free to use the contact information in the link to get in touch and start a conversation going to work out if Scargill is the right place for you to explore more about life, community and God.