We wanted to let you know about some exciting changes we’re making to ensure, as far as we are able, the flourishing future of your local parish church. These new plans also offer you new ways of becoming involved in, supporting and enriching, parish life.

For a long time, the churches of this area of Bishop Thornton, Burnt Yates, Markington, Ripley, and South Stainley have been successfully working together in many ways. We share the two vicars, we come together for united festival services, and we work jointly on providing a pattern of worship across all five of our church buildings to offer a variety of styles and times of services to suit as many people as we can.

This collaboration and sense of unity in what we do has been a real blessing, enabling us to maintain far more activity, and engage with more people, than would otherwise have been possible. Recognising the strengths and opportunities in this, and to build on it still further, we have taken the positive step of merging our five parishes into a single new parish – Cayton Parish.

On an operational level, this will allow for more communal and integrated planning and delivery of events and services. It will also enable us to reduce the mandatory bureaucracy and administration of our parishes by up to 80%, and simplify our contracts for supplies of essentials like insurance, and utilities.

There are no immediate plans to change the pattern of worship on offer across our churches. (We’ve included a copy of our current pattern for you – do please join us where and when you can).

We do hope, however, that as we become a single parish then any worries people have about attending a church in a village other than the one they live in will continue to diminish. We’ve already seen the benefits of more and more people traveling between our churches to enjoy and support the variety of services on offer. We want people to know that they are welcome in all our churches, no matter where they live, and we would love to see you wherever and whenever.

We look forward to working with you all as we move our church forward into ever greater life and strength, and better fulfilling our calling to enable all who wish to do so to enter more fully into their relationship with God, offer him our worship, share his love with the world, and in so doing discover the fullness of who we are created to be: his beloved and infinitely valued children, of whom he is especially fond.