Newsletter
Ballycastle Church Action Issue No.1 February 2011
Ballycastle Church Action Issue No.1 February 2011
Welcome to our first Newsletter. We hope you will find it interesting and we will be glad to hear from you about items we might include in our next issue or suggestions you might have for Ballycastle Church Action. Please send your suggestions/ comments to The Editor, Ballycastle Church Action,
60 Ann Street, Ballycastle, BT54 6AD.
E-mail: goodmorningballycastle@googlemail.com
Web: wwwballycastlechurchaction.org.uk.
In 2005, following a major conference organized by Ryan Moore of Moyle District Council and the Irish School of Ecumenics with Faith Works and other Christian communities, David Quinney Mee and Patrick McLoughlin, with the local clergy and other interested people met regularly for about a year and, after a public meeting in the Ferry Terminal, Ballycastle Church Action came into being.
Since then we have been working very hard to establish and in some cases re-establish some inter-church activities and, thanks to our fantastic volunteers, the Good Morning Ballycastle telephone call service is a big success. Our main source of referral is from statutory bodies such as the Elder Care Team of Social Services, etc. and Kate Elliott, our Good Morning co-ordinator, does a fantastic job in recruiting isolated folk in the community who want to receive a friendly phone call, once, twice, up to five times a week, Monday to Friday, just to check that all is well with them. For some of our folk this might be the only contact they have with others on that day.
Good Morning Ballycastle started in October 2007 and since then, would you believe, 38,458 calls have been made. Our computer system records every call so that we can validate these calls. At present we have 109 people receiving telephone calls either daily or a couple of times a week and their ages range from 45 years to 96 years of age. About 20 of our people are in there 90’s, living on their own. The rest are isolated older people, mostly pensioners. The average number of calls per week is 449. In January so far, 1803 calls have been made and, on average, 96 calls are made every day by 3 or 4 volunteers. To give you an idea of how much it takes to run the service, our telephone bill is around £700 per quarter. The overall cost of running the project is about £30,000 per annum. We employ two part-time workers – Kate now has 20 hours per week, having voluntarily reduced her hours from 28 hours per week, until such time as we have sustainable funding once more, and Ashley has 12 hours. (I would not like to tell you how many actual hours they work for us!) The work of GMB is supplemented by 4 volunteers every day. Most volunteers do one morning per week and while we have 26 volunteers on our register, there are always some who cannot make it because of holidays, illness and other commitments. If you could join the team to ease the load, we would be very grateful to you. Training will be provided. Contact Kate at the Good Morning Office tel. 20768309 or call in to 60 Ann Street, Ballycastle and Kate & Ashley will fill you in on the service.
For the last three years we have been able to provide a Christmas Dinner & Party for the GMB folk. This is a good opportunity for folk to meet each other. The Corrymeela Community have supported us greatly by providing free transport and excellent meals at minimal cost. They cannot do enough for us when we are at the Centre. At the dinner in December, it was a sheer joy to see such happy faces singing away to their heart’s content, reciting their poems and telling us their stories.
Unfortunately funding for GMB is a big problem. Northern Health & Social Care Trust were unable to continue to fund us this year due to cutbacks. Financial support from the churches and local donations enabled us to get through this financial year and we are hoping that the Trust will be able to fund us for the coming years.
Ballycastle Church Action is the governing body for Good Morning Ballycastle and some of the committee are designated to support the project (all committee members are volunteers).Peace & Reconciliation. This section is headed up by Rev. Dr. Gordon Gray and we have successfully run Community Fora and Church Leader Conferences on the topics of “A Shared Future”, “Who is a Victim in our society”? and “Forgiveness, Justice and Reconciliation”. These events have been funded by the Peace lll provision of the EU – in particular the Church/Faith Groups Confidence Building Programme and the Victims Development Programme. Currently we are planning a 6-week Course, with Dr Johnston McMaster of the Irish School of Ecumenics on Ethical and Shared Remembering which will revisit the events of the decade 1912-22 (the formation of the UVF, the First World War, Somme, the 1916 Rising, the Treaty and the formation of the Irish Free State and Northern Ireland), with the aim of exploring how the anticipated centennial ‘commemorations’ of these can be handled in an inclusive rather than a divisive manner. BCA members have also attended seminars on “The Role of Church in the Community” as well as the Programme for “Cohesion, Sharing & Integration” consultation document of the First Minister & Deputy First Minister. While these events have been important from an educational point of view they have enabled our local Churches, through BCA, to have a ‘presence’ and a ‘voice’ in the wider concerns of our society where the ‘Christian’ viewpoint can so easily be sidelined or remain silent. In this respect we await confirmation of funding for a further series of Community Forums on Faith and Politics in which it is hoped to enable church members and the local public to meet with prominent politicians and church leaders for face to face dialogue. We have a verbal promise of funding through the Sectarianism and Racism Peace lll Programme. While our BCA ‘Peace and Reconciliation’ concern is not ‘funding-led’ it is enormously helpful to be able to plan and carry through such events at absolutely no cost to limited BCA central funds or our local church budgets - for that BCA is very grateful to the various Peace lll funders.
Some BCA members recently attended a very interesting seminar entitled Faith in Policing led by the Chief Constable Matt Baggott. Faith in Policing is about positive engagement with the church and faith sector. It is about law enforcement and making communities safer and bringing the community involvement to those suffering because of suicide; victims of domestic or sexual abuse; families with not enough food or clothing and the addict who has reached the end of the road and has been written off by society. Our local PSNI Inspector Bryan Hume and Chief Inspector Steven Cargin addressed our last BCA meeting and appealed for the Church involvement through practical application of Christian love that can often reach where ‘official’ lines of communication cannot.
Who Are Ballycastle Church Action? The following comprises BCA : Canon Stuart Lloyd in the absence of Rev. David Palmer of the Church of Ireland, V. Rev. Fr. Brian Daly, new Parish Priest in the Catholic Church and Rev. Philip Wilson representing the Presbyterian Church following the departure of Rev. Eddie Dorrans. Church of Ireland & Presbyterian Church in Ballycastle are in the process of choosing a new Rector and a new Minister and we look forward to them joining us in due course.
BCA Church Representatives are:
3 from each denomination: Catholic Church: Kate O’Connor; Donnacha O’Brion and Maeve Walsh.
Presbyterian Church: Olive Bell; Rev. Dr. Gordon Gray and another to be appointed.
Church of Ireland: Betty Wilkinson, Dr. Ivan Bell and John Nicholl.
Independent Members of Committee:
David Quinney Mee (Secretary) Gerry McConville, (Treasurer) Christine Mitchell (Vice Chair), Eleanor Duff, Caroline McCaughan and Mark Myer.
Paul Hutchinson, Centre Director, represents the Corrymeela Community and Ryan Moore represents Moyle District Council.
Carol Services:
Each of the churches held wonderful Carol Services but I think we were all “caroled out” by the time Christmas came! How about next year we all join together for one carol service. It would be good if we could walk together from church to church, regardless of the weather, with lanterns representing the Light of Christ? All those who cannot walk from church to church could go to their own (or another’s) church and join in with us when we reach you. What do you think?
Week of Prayer for Christian Unity : St. Patrick’s & St. Brigid’s hosted this service on 23rd January. Rev. Dr. Victor Dobbin addressed the congregation; Rev. Dr. Godfrey Brown, Rev. Gordon Freeman and V. Rev. Brian Daly, PP officiated. Readers were Olive Bell, Christine Mitchell and Maeve Walsh. The service was aided by a beautiful choir from all three churches, directed by Siobhán Mullin with organ accompaniment by Pat Black.
Election of New Chair:
Maeve Walsh was unanimously elected to the office of Chair for BCA. Having lived in Ballycastle for 40+ years. Maeve will be well known to many of you. Originally she hailed from Dublin’s Fair City and is married to Colum – a well known Ballycastle man. They have two adult children Fiona and Brian (both married) and four grandchildren.
Maeve brings to the office of Chair a wide interest and knowledge of ecumenism; she is a member of St. Patrick’s & St. Brigid’s Catholic Church where she enjoys her Church Choir on a regular basis. She has been a Eucharistic Minister and Reader in her church and served on the inaugural Parish Pastoral Council in the past.
Maeve is a member of the Corrymeela Community and the local branch of U3A. She recently retired from her post as Office Manager with Ballycastle Social Services after 30+ years service. She is a Cruse Bereavement Counsellor. Suffice to say Maeve has a plethora of diploma/certificates in Peace & Reconciliation studies, Catholic Evangelization, Counseling, Community Relations etc. She has enjoyed membership of many Ballycastle groups and served on the Down & Connor Diocesan Committee for Charismatic Renewal in the past. For 20+ years Maeve served on the school Board of Governors for St. Patrick’s & St. Brigid’s during which she held the office of Vice Chair and Secretary for many years.
Maeve has a keen interest in the role of Women in the Church and longs for the day when all offices in the church will be open to the best candidate regardless of whether they be male or female.
One of her treasured memories is attending the installation of the Rev. Dr. Godfrey Brown’s installation as Moderator of the Presbyterian Church with a number of Catholic friends (including the late Ita McMichael) in the days when “ecumenism” was anything but a popular activity. And this is an opportune moment to congratulate Godfrey and Dr. Gordon Gray on the 50th Anniversary of their Ordinations to the Ministry. May you both continue to know the love and blessings of God in the years to come.
The Messines Experience: On Friday 26th November 2010 at 0400 hrs. Kate Elliott and Maeve Walsh, set off for Ieper (formally known as Ypres) in Belgium, at the invitation of Ryan Moore of MDC, funded by NE Peace lll Partnership. The group was made up of 25 folk from Moyle, Coleraine and Larne Council areas.
We do not have space to tell you the detail of this fantastic trip in this issue - suffice to say it was a trip of a lifetime, superbly led by delegates from the International School for Peace Studies, whose knowledge of the World War One Battlefields was second to none. One highlight of the trip was the daily rendition of the “Last Post” at the Menin Gate in Ieper, every evening at 8pm (since 1928). The memorial houses the names of over 55,500 soldiers who died defending this town and have no known grave. Kate had the opportunity to lay a wreath on behalf of our group. Kate and Maeve are working on a power point presentation, which they will share with any interested group in due course.