An interview with David Richards, Vicar.
Please introduce yourself and tell us something about your involvement with Carpenters school.
My name is David Richards. I’m vicar of St John’s, Stratford in London’s east end. I’ve been vicar here since 1990 and I’m a governor at Carpenters School.
I’ve tried to be the local vicar to the school: led assemblies, turned up to special occasions and generally been someone who drops in and offers support where necessary. It’s been good fun – a good positive experience.
How would you summarise your relationship with the staff and the head and the school in general?
It’s a number of relationships because I’m a governor and I was Chair of Governors for six years because, frankly, no-one else was prepared to be Chair of Governors. I want to be involved in the life of the school because the school is an important part of the local community. The relationship with the present Head is extremely good because she’s hardworking and she cares about the kids in the local community. The relationship with the staff is sometimes a bit difficult because they’re always moving around - lots of changes of staff - lots of good people and the good people move on the fastest usually. But I’ve always been somebody who tries to get on well with the school and enjoys being part of the life of the school.
Why is it important to have a good relationship with the local schools?
As an Anglican vicar I’m vicar of the whole parish - not just chaplain to the congregation - so I try to be as involved as I can in as many parts of the local community as possible. The children in the school are often children of church members and some of the children in the school are actually church attenders but whether that is the case or not, I see all the children as my parishioners because the catchment of the school is entirely within my parish. I think it’s important to be involved in something that is essential to the life of the community like the local school. I like to take all the opportunities I’m given and that is one of the opportunities.
What form does your contact with schools take?
It varies: we try to do what the schools want. I’ve always been available for assemblies. We’re very happy for schools to come to the church for visits and Christmas carol services and for projects when the kids want to do something artistic. For example, we’ve been able to help with some music projects and sometimes I’ve gone in and worked with classes on RE projects. I like to get to the school’s special events if I can: the Christmas concert and that sort of thing. It’s part of being the local vicar.
Is contact between schools and your church a regular occurrence?
This is the first time that these particular teachers from Carpenter’s School have been here on a visit but we have lots of contacts with schools. We are a fairly high-profile church - we have a number of schools within easy walking distance and we’re a church with lots of interesting things to see.
The reasons behind visits from schools can vary enormously. Sometimes the teachers have a very clear idea of what they want the children to see, sometimes they just want me to walk the children around the building, pointing out things of interest. We’ve prepared a basic information pack for teachers which highlights some of the interesting features in the building plus a tiny bit of history. It contains some suggestions of what they might want the school children to notice. It’s good to remember that a visit can link up with other subjects such as art and music as well as RE. And, of course, the church is part of the local history of the Stratford community. Some teachers use that information pack but very few are constrained by it and most of them look around first and make their own minds up about what they would like to do in the building.
In terms of the experience we can offer kids when they get here: we’ve got a history exhibition in the building. We’ve got a very good scale model of the church so they can take a birds-eye look at the building if that’s interesting for them. It’s a large and interesting space in which the children can look at things, draw things and ask as many questions as they like.
Is it a problem that during a visit the church is basically empty of the people who actually worship there?
We’ve got photos of the church with the congregation in attendence. I like them to see that we have a multi-cultural congregation – people of all ages, all backgrounds, all nationalities. I explain to them that on Sunday morning there is hardly a spare seat. We talk about what happens during a service – that we sing hymns and pray. We talk about the vicar speaking to people from the pulpit and why we have a pulpit - which is simply so that the congregation can see the vicar. We don’t use the pulpit nowadays but sometimes the kids like to step up and try their hand in it. We also talk about babies being baptised at the font and the other things that go on in a church. In fact, when the school children are visiting us there are usually other people in the church - so they can see people coming in and out of various parts of the building and they can pick up on the idea that this is a living building, seven days a week.
What different approaches do schools and teachers have in bringing their children here?
It varies enormously. We get visits from everyone from Keystage 1 to Keystage 3. Sometimes a teacher focuses very specifically on RE and they want the children to discover more about Christianity. Often the children are working on a multi-focus project which might contain elements of history and art and architecture. Sometimes they are looking at ‘a religious building’, sometimes they are comparing and contrasting a variety of religious buildings. Some visitors here have focused on the martyr’s memorial in the churchyard and they spend all their time sketching it and learning about the Tudor persecutions.
What sort of preparation is necessary before a visit?
I think it’s important that teachers have done a little bit of preparation so that they have some idea of the size and scale of the building. It’s a big building and the younger kids will dart-off in all directions, so a bit of preparation on what to focus the children’s attention on is usually a good idea.
In terms of the children themselves, it doesn’t seem to make much of a difference whether they’ve done any preparation or not. They get excited - it’s the sense of occasion and the experience of getting out of school, of walking here and being somewhere different. They get the chance to look at something new and have the chance to pry into corners. It sharpens us up as a church because we have to make sure the collection box is empty otherwise the kids become fascinated by the fact there’s a fiver in it. Or they find a bit of Blutac on the back of a chair and want to know what it’s doing there. A bit of Blutac can become the focus of their entire visit - far more interesting to them than a stained-glass window or the altar.
So it doesn’t make a huge difference what they’ve done beforehand but I’d say it is important that we send them off with something to think about and class teachers often base future lessons on the visit. I hope they leave with a better understanding of Christianity. There are so many myths – that churches are unfriendly, unwelcoming buildings. That churches are empty and they are all about ritual. We try to put over the fact that we’re about the person of Jesus. We do that without being evangelistic but we say that’s why we are here.
I think it’s good for schools to realise that churches are part of their local community and it’s good for kids to realise we are here and the church is a place they can wander into. We’re open seven days a week. Quite often kids come along and ask if they can sit quietly. Sometimes they are looking for help with projects. So there’s a lot we can offer schools in terms of being a resource for learning about Christianity in a fairly contemporary and lively way.
Have you ever experienced any problems between what a teacher might be trying to achieve in bringing pupils to a church and what you might be trying to achieve in welcoming them in?
There can be a tension between education and indoctrination but most churches are very happy to offer an educational visit. It’s not an exercise in propaganda. We never try to convert anyone during a church visit any more than we’d try to do that in a school assembly. We’re open and upfront about what we believe but we don’t aim to get the children to adopt our beliefs. What’s important to me is that we learn about each others beliefs.
What we do get out of it is that so often Christians tend to get a ‘bad press’ – as being boring or unfriendly or a bit unapproachable and I think Christians can improve their relationships with the local community and with the locals schools by showing that we’ve got something to offer... in a friendly way and without any sense of preaching at kids.
What would you consider would be unrealistic expectations of what school children might get out of a visit to a local church?
Church visits can’t replace classroom teaching of Christianity but they can act as a springboard into a classroom exploration of religious ideas. A church visit is only going to last an hour or so but in that time you can start an exploration of what Christians believe and some of the things Christians focus on during a religious service in a church.
I enjoy school visits and contacts with schools enormously. One of the benefits is that kids know me. If they ever want to come and talk to me as the vicar – and we’re obviously very conscious of child safety policies and all the rest of it – but they know where to find me. I’m not a distant figure.
Connecting with schools also helps sharpen-up our ‘presentation’ as a church – how we show our teaching and our buildings and our faith to the world. It gives me the opportunity to be known to a wider cross-section of my parish. I have a parish of eight thousand people and only a tiny minority of those come to church. It’s a chance to meet more people.
It’s got a very practical aspect as well. Kids who were Keystage 1 when I was first going to Carpenters School and they were first coming here are now teenagers in Stratford and I feel I can walk around late at night without too many worries because lots of these kids actually know me. There is a sense of being part of their community, part of their lives and perhaps they’re less likely to mug me, truth be told.
What sort of questions do you get asked by kids?
They often think I’m either sub-human or super-human. I’ve never quite worked out what. There’s lots of confusion about whether Church of England vicars can be married or not because Roman Catholic priests can’t, and that confuses them endlessly. They often ask funny questions like “do I wear my collar in bed” and “are vicars allowed to eat chips”. There are often questions about what made me decide to be a vicar. Was it because it meant I’d only have to work on Sundays? But there are also more profound questions. Some kids want to know what made me decide to be a Christian. Some very interesting questions come from kids from other faith groups. They know the leaders of their own faith and they want to know in what ways Church of England clergy differ from their own faith leaders.
You’re a school-friendly vicar. Can teachers expect a sympathetic welcome anywhere in the country? Do all clergy in the Church of England share your attitude to visits from schools?
We all have our individual styles and some of us will be better at working with children than others. I think it’s important to say I am no expert. I’m not a teacher. I’m not particularly trained to work with children. I’m just your average vicar who wants to be involved with the whole of the life of my community. I’ve been prepared to have a go and the teachers have been prepared to have a go. I think teachers will find that most vicars will welcome contact with schools because we are sent out as Anglican clergy to be vicars to the whole parish and if there’s a school in the parish that’s part of the life of what goes on in our community. We’ve all got different church buildings and some are more interesting than others for school visits. By the same token we’ve all got different gifts and talents and some vicars really enjoy school assemblies because it gives us a buzz and we enjoy actually being there and working with the kids, other might be better at working with small groups in a classroom, exploring what Christianity is all about. But I’d be very surprised if local clergy weren’t willing to, at very least, meet teachers and look at how they can help to teach the kids about Christianity. Not to teach the kids Christianity but to teach the kids about Christianity. That’s where we’re at – we’re about learning about all faiths because we realise we need to live together and need to understand one another.
What do the children see and do during a standard visit to the church?
A typical tour would start off with us welcoming the children and I introduce myself. Then we cluster around our scale model of the church so that the children get an idea how big the building is which is quite important, I think, for small children to get a sense of the overall scale.
We always give the teachers a bit of maths to do. The church was built in 1834 and we get the teachers to work out how old it is. We’ve got an interesting font with a counter-balance so we see how that works and explain what it’s for and that gives us an opportunity to talk about why some people get baptised. And the fact that Christianity isn’t for everyone – it’s a religion that people opt into or opt out of. Christians have to decide they are going to be Christians.
We talk about holy communion and the symbolism of Jesus’ death and resurrection. We’ve got an amazing east window that actually shows the crucifixion scene and I always point to that and explain that Jesus died on the cross for us surrounded by all the soldiers with their hardened faces. We show them the lectern and the bible which is very important because many of the kids don’t know what a bible is all about. They get to see the pulpit and explain that’s where the vicar talks to the congregation from and we give them a chance to be preachers if they want to.
We’re quite a musical church so we show them our drums and then the organ and they’re usually blown away by the organ – there are so many different sounds. From gentle quiet sounds to sounds which vibrate around the whole building and we give one or two of them a chance to demonstrate their musical talents by playing the organ.
So we give them an insight into what happens in the building. Usually they’ll want to do some drawings or some get interested in counting how many crosses they can find in the church. We might get them to look at the various bits of artwork and talk about how Christian stories have inspired a lot of art in the world. Along the way we try to get over something of the idea that Christians believe that God created the world, that Jesus came into the world to tell us what God is like and that he died on the cross but rose again and that for two thousand years Christians have been wanting to listen to his teaching, to follow him and to learn from him.
A visit for younger kids will usually last for approximately forty-five minutes and that will give them a chance to split into groups and do a bit of drawing and gives them a chance to ask me some questions. That’s very important, that they get the chance to verbalise their own questions. Some teachers prepare the questions in advance and that has some value too because they’ve had to think about the questions.
Do the children experience any sense of awe while they are in the church building?
The building itself encourages a sense of awe. If they look up, it’s a very long way from the floor to the ceiling so the scale of the building can give them a sense of awe. The sound of the building sometimes gives them a sense of awe too. We have a four-second echo – so if I say “hello” in a nice loud voice they can experience the echo. The organ gives them a sense of wonder because the sound really does rattle around the building and they can feel the sound as well as hear it.
In terms of faith, it depends on where the kids are coming from. Some will be naturally awed in a church. Some Muslim kids say they find it spooky coming into a church which is interesting. Not all by any means. It depends on their expectations, I suppose.
It’s not easy with very young children but if you can get the kids to sit quietly for few moments and explore what they feel, that can be quite powerful.
We talk to them about the different things that happen in the church. We explain that sometimes we are singing, sometimes praying, sometimes just listening and sometimes we are simply enjoying being silent. So I might encourage them to sit and enjoy the silence inside the church.
I sometimes encourage them to look at the east window and ask what they see in it. Interestingly they all notice different things. That’s another way you can get into discussing faith – that faith is something special, something wonderful.