It marked the beginning of a challenging and painful
three year period of transition where the responsibility
for the vision care and administration of the community
passed from the founders and the few who shared that responsibility
to the many who now were the Northumbria community.

The Northumbria Community had come of age

How had it all begun?

the founders 1977

It was in 1977 that Andy Raine introduced himself to
John and Linda Skinner.Together they would become
the founders of the Northumbria community.

Andy brought to the relationship
a contagious affection
for the holy island of Lindisfarne,
a love of the Northumbrian saints
and the seeds of a vision
which was beginning to find
clarity in the language
of the upper and nether springs.

John and Linda would give to
Andy a home from which to base his
itinerant ministry, a refuge and meeting place
for many other folk, a place of the nethersprings
and the seeds of a spirituality
that would find a focus in a new monasticism.

Together they would organise Easter workshops
which would become the focus of the covenant of community.

For the next ten years
their way of living
shared with faithful friends
would find expression in the rule and
the Northumbrian office that provided the
foundation of the Northumbria community.

the few 1990 – 1995

Northumbria ministries was led
by a baptist minister from Sunderland, Roy Searle.

A former college contemporary
of John they would rekindle a
relationship expressed in
a partnership; nethersprings
home of Northumbria ministries
a prelude to Northumbria community
a covenant relationship
sealed at Old Bewick.

Roy would bring a vision for and a commitment
to Northumbria. He became an ambassador of the
upper and nether springs, an apostle of a new monasticism
and a partner in leadership of the Northumbria community.

The founders and the few
saw the establishment
of the Northumbria community,
the formation of a trust and a trading company.
Hetton hall become the mother house of the
community.The publication of the office book
and the beginning of a European vision, the Celtic arc.

the many 1995

The rapid growth of the community
meant the responsibilities
and liabilities of community life
fell on a few. The burden was too great.
This led to the call to community.

John and Linda hoped
to begin pioneering work in
Europe but agreed to stay until
the leadership of the community
was restructured a further two years.
This led to the re-formation of
the community council.

It also began a period of preparation for Trevor Miller
who would work alongside Roy as a leader of the community.

In January 1998 at Bradford cathedral
John and Linda handed to Roy and Trevor
and the community council the responsibility
they shared for the Northumbria community.

With Andy they would be available for the
spiritual direction of the community
and in return receive love and support for
their pioneering work in Europe.

The FoundersFewMany is essential reading. Prepared at the time to restructure the leadership of the community, it also provides valuable insight into community life, development, spirituality and organisation.

Click below to download

FoundersFewMany.doc

“The closer a person is to the past
and present memories of a community,
the more meaningful the participation.
The further away, either leads to disillusionment,
or the constant cry for uninformed change”

Jean Vanier

You never know in the routine of your day when a chance meeting, a stray word in a conversation or an unforeseen event will change the course of your life. The moment will probably go unnoticed and only later be acknowledged for what it was, a gentle collision prompted by the Spirit of God.

When we try to find a conversation, a meeting, an event that would lead to the formation of the Northumbria Community, two defining moments become apparent.

In 1979 a young lady, Diana Ellis a member of Alnwick Prayer Group sent a letter to Andy Raine who at that time was in the Canada. She said that “more than all” the presentation he had left them to prepare would not be ready by the time he returned. He was not to worry because God had shown her in a vision to prepare excerpts from the original presentation to do that year. Next year, 1980 they were to do the whole show at the end of a two week workshop. She went on: the workshops were to be small schools of creativity; a place for sharing vision; a time of sharing and joining together as one.

The first Easter Workshop took place in 1980 in Berwick upon Tweed. Easter Workshops became the meeting place for many who would go on to form the community and a melting-pot of hopes and fears, prayers and protest that would give substance to the ethos of the Northumbria Community.

A few years earlier, in 1977 an unforeseen meeting took place between John Skinner and Andy Raine, again in Berwick upon Tweed. Both made a mental note of that initial encounter with an entry in the margin that they should meet up again. They did, several times. A year after there first meeting, Andy would share a home with John and his wife Linda following several months in Canada. This began a relationship that would span two decades and the fruit of which would be The Northumbria Community.

What is it that distinguishes those who are called founders of a community from other people who were at the beginning?

“Leaders articulate and define what has previously
remained implicit or unsaid; then they
invent images, metaphors and models
that provide a focus for a new attention.
By so doing they consolidate or challenge
prevailing wisdom. In short an essential feature
in leadership is the capacity to
influence and organize meaning
for the members of the organization.”

Warren Bennis & Burt Nanus

From a life lived together and with an increasing number of faithful friends came the images, metaphors and models that would eventually characterize the life and spirituality of the Northumbria Community, many of which they introduced themselves. This would begin to develop a language that would draw attention to and give coherence to their way of living.

The thirteen pioneering and formative years of the community are best described as chaotic. In a diary entry in ’85 John quotes Stringfellow who captures the life they were living:

“dynamic and erratic, spontaneous and radical, audacious and immature, committed if not altogether coherent, ecumenically open and often experimental, visible here and there now and then, but unsettled institutionally. Most of all – enacting a fearful hope for human life in society. Almost monastic in nature.”

William Stringfellow

It was the desire to ‘organise meaning’ in their own chaotic lives and to give ‘coherence’ to the way of life to which they had been called that would become the defining influence in the formation of the Northumbria Community and would ‘organise meaning’ for those who were to follow. If nobody had followed they would have continued to have prayed the prayers that made sense of their life, now found in the Daily Office. If nobody had followed they would still have chosen ‘availability and vulnerability’ as their way of living now expressed in the Rule. This is what gives Andy Raine and John and Linda Skinner the distinction of being the acknowledged founders of the Northumbria Community.

]]> http://www.northumbriacommunity.com/2009/09/28/founders/feed/ 0 http://www.northumbriacommunity.com/2009/09/27/andy-raine/ http://www.northumbriacommunity.com/2009/09/27/andy-raine/#comments Sun, 27 Sep 2009 19:06:30 +0000 admin http://www.northumbriacommunity.com/?p=170 (We have chosen a selection of biographical details for Andy, John and Linda which give clues to their self understanding and contribution to the ethos of the community)

Andy brought a contagious affection for the holy island of Lindisfarne a love of the Northumbrian saints and the seeds of a vision which was beginning to find clarity in the language of the upper and nether springs.

A clue to helping us get to know Andy is captured in a photograph of him, as a child, next to St. Aidan’s monument on Holy Island. Early in his life Andy found ‘a place of resurrection.’ Not for him some journey to a distant shore, but still a crossing of the sea, to Lindisfarne, The Holy Island. If we measure this journey in miles then it was only a short distance to travel, but we would also miss the point. When Andy crossed the causeway to Holy Island he gave up the possibility of any other way of life. This was the place God had chosen for him. As such, it became and is the non-negotiable part of his life. His work, marriage, relationships, hopes and opportunities have and are worked out within the framework of this understanding. This covenant relationship to Holy Island would become a feature of Easter workshops which often concluded on the Island, and later the venue for the Northumbria Community in the renewal of their commitment to the Rule.

In the early days, monastic was not a word that would find a lot of use in Andy’s vocabulary. Yet the life he lived hinted at a way of living familiar to Holy Island, first practiced by those early Celtic Saints, St. Aidan, St. Oswald and St. Cuthbert. Nor would Celtic have much use in his vocabulary, as the memory and spirituality of those early Celtic saints still reverberates from the Island landscape. Instead he chose the vocabulary of the upper and nether springs to give meaning and understanding to the spirituality he was both seeking and finding. For Andy, Holy Island is the uppersprings, a refreshing, moving, life giving stream flowing from a deep spring whose source is the generations of prayer and faith associated with the Island and in particular those wayfaring Celtic Saints. Quite unconsciously, Andy put into the foundation of the Northumbria Community the spirituality of these early Celtic monastic communities and only later would it become a necessary self-conscious connection.

A familiar sight on the roads in Northumberland in the late 70′s early 80′s was Andy, with three or four suitcases, most of which had seen better days, hitching a lift to his next destination. Availability to the life God had called him, precluded a career and a regular salary. Supported instead by occasional odd jobs, ministry, and gifts from family and friends. Unselfconsciously, he had chosen the same method of transport as St. Aidan, who walked everywhere so he had the time and opportunity to meet people. His aim was to make available practical and down to earth ways of living as a Christian, which he had learned himself or been taught by another and leading others to faith in Jesus that had given meaning to his own life. One vehicle to achieve these aims was Dance. Wherever he went, he recruited folk to take part in his dance presentations, refusing to take no from people who thought they weren’t good enough and from men who thought dance should be reserved for the ladies. In doing so, he made sure the ministry of dance did not become the property of the professionals and all a little genteel. He was equally at home preparing pieces for use in a liturgical setting or for use in the street which was his preferred option. This preference is expressed in the Rule, in Church Without Walls. Dance created communities, as people gathered together around a point of common interest. The Vine, in Earl Shilton was an example of this. Dance was an essential feature of Easter workshops and an integral part of the life of the Northumbria Community.

A contribution worth highlighting that Andy made to the ethos of the Community was in regard to putting relationships before reputation. Andy had a habit of making friends with those who were marginalized in society. People who because of poor education , little social definition, or moral failure were regarded as not important enough to invest time in. Andy invested the time. Often traveling long distances to spend a day with somebody. His total support and lack of embarrassment with those who were taking their first faltering steps in ministry and his refusal to only invest time in people who could do something for him, remains a constant challenge to those who use people to get on in their ministry and drop them soon after they arrive. It is also the key to healthy community life where the reputation of the community is always secondary to the welfare of each individual.

For those who know Andy his idiosyncrasies are legendary, a subject of affection and frustration amongst his friends. Love or loathe him, you will always remember you met him.

(Andy married Anna in 1994. They have two children, Joel and Martha.)

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John and Linda would pioneer the place of the Nethersprings and cultivate a spirituality that would find focus in a new monasticism. Although John and Linda are no longer at the heart of the Northumbria Community they continue to have an enduring influence on both community life and direction. Their definitive contribution was to provide the images, metaphors and models that created the focus for a new attention new monasticism that was and continues to be a primary and guiding influence in the organisation of meaning for the community.

In their journals and diaries which span two decades and from John’s lectures you will find many of the distinctive words, phrases, quotations and thinking that are peculiar to the self expression of the Northumbria Community and were foundational in the construction of the community ethos.

For both John and Linda the monastic church was a guiding influence in their nurture and development in the Christian faith.

It was John who in 1979 during his first year at theological college had first discovered the Bonhoeffer quote on a new type of monasticism;

‘the restoration of the church will surely come only from a new type of monasticism which has nothing in common with the old but a complete lack of compromise in a life lived in accordance with the Sermon on the Mount in the discipleship of Christ. I think it is time to gather people together to do this’

(Bonhoeffer a letter to his brother Karl-Friedrick 14 Jan 1935 an extract)

Unlike Bonhoeffer, he felt that this new monasticism must have an intimate and deep link with the old.

At 18, Linda had left her home in Sale, Cheshire, for a working holiday in New Zealand. It was on this adventure that she first heard the call of Christ to ‘deny yourself take up your cross and follow me.’ Linda did just that. Leaving behind her flat and possessions she took to the street sharing the same message that had captured her own heart. Mistaken for somebody who had a breakdown, she was rescued by a community of Sisters who helped her make sense of her newly acquired faith in the Lord. The images of their own poverty, prayer and dependency on the Lord would have a sustaining influence for Linda as she struggled with the insecurities that would follow her vocation and caring for an ever growing community of people.

John and Linda met and married while at Bible College in Berwick upon Tweed, which would eventually lead to Lincoln Theological College and John’s ordination as a Priest in the Church of England. When newly married they had attended a retreat at the Society of St. Francis (SSF) at Alnmouth Friary on the beautiful Northumberland coast, seeking God’s guidance for their lives together. It was SSF who would offer friendship and spiritual direction throughout the early years of pioneering the community, when the Church was suspicious and unsupportive of their vocation. It was Br. Rammon who first affirmed their call to the contemplative life. Br. Jonathan and later Br. Colin Wilfred who would give advice, support and spiritual direction. SSF gave them a very positive introduction to the Monastic Tradition. However, it was Br. Roland Walls of the Community of Transfiguration who became their mentor as they pioneered the Nethersprings and would be their spiritual director and soul friend for nearly fifteen years. The Community of Transfiguration became the model from which John and Linda began to shape their own lives and later that of the Community. The small garden huts in which the brothers live are a symbol of the vulnerability that opens the door to ‘the one thing necessary’ and their availability to people and place, a sign of a freedom that comes from a lack of security, possessions and social definition

From their days of living with Andy at Berwick upon Tweed, the dark and difficult days of discovering the Nethersprings, shaping the Northumbria Community and traveling throughout Europe, John and Linda have retained their pioneering spirit. This, as always, has endeared them to those on the journey and frustrated and alienated those who prefer a more established way.

(Linda and John have four grown up children Jayne, Sara, Sadie and Ben)

John & Linda Skinner

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Many aspects of the Rule are a reflection of their experience of life in Northumberland in the formative years, when they had no choice but to ask the question; How then shall we live? How does a family embrace a contemplative/monastic spirituality? What will it mean for the children? What about work and a career? Does this change our marriage? Where will we live? What does availability and vulnerability actually mean?

Several of the prayers that constitute the core of a Northumbrian Office later incorporated into Celtic Daily Prayer were first prayed as a response to what they were living through, before those prayers became part of the much loved morning, mid-day,and evening prayer. A good example of that is in the mid-day office;

‘Let the beauty of the Lord our God be upon us
Establish now the work of our hands
Establish now the work of our hands’

This verse from Ps.90v17 was adopted by Chris and Sandra, John and Linda during a time when they were struggling to make a living gardening, and doing odd jobs. At the same time, trying to develop a daily pattern of prayer and coping with an increasing number of visitors to the Nethersprings. Diary entries at this time dismiss any romanticism, but rather, reveal a painful struggle to live and understand their vocation. It would be Chris, the master of many trades who would supervise and work on the renovation of the stable block at Hetton, often praying in his materials as he went, or turn his hand to any practical need. It would be Sandra, who for many years was the administrator of both Trust and Trading who would have to make financial decisions, in faith, working with a continual budget deficit. Sandra had learned in a hard school the need to Trust in the Lord. If the full story of their contribution is ever told then there should be a genuine sadness that they were lost to the community during the restructuring, ‘from the founders, few to the many.’ A process ironically, which Sandra, who with Chris were both with the ‘founders and the few’ worked hard to achieve.

Ms Sandra Haggerstone | Mr Chris Haggerstone

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