Beating the retreat

ON THE crest of a wave, but with plain warning of the onrushing tide, seafaring cleric Canon Bill Broad weighed anchor on Tuesday evening after 40 years before the priestly mast.

For all that time, he told his final congregation, he had simply led the long retreat.

When first he set sail there were 2.5 million in parish church pews each Sunday morning; now there are 900,000. When he began there were 14,000 clergy serving 41 million people; now there are fewer than 9,000 serving 55 million people.

When he set out, the theological colleges were sending out 600 young men each year for the ordained ministry; now they annually turn out 250 people of all ages.

"I believe the retreat will continue, there is no credible alternative," he said. "We shall continue to baptise children whose parents haven't the slightest idea what they are doing or why; we shall continue to make funerals more and more popular and less and less theological; we shall continue to marry and to put on a better service than the register office and numbers will continue to get smaller.

"All I ask you to remember is that, although I prophesied the doom nature of this happening, I failed to do anything to stop it."

There it might have ended. There we might have whispered "Man overboard", let Bill and the Church of England be buried quietly at sea and gone home to dream of raspberry ripples.

None will have done so. None privileged to have been in St Clare's Church, Newton Aycliffe on Tuesday will ever forget the manner of his going, the luminescence of his last sermon or the ingenious joyousness of its peroration.

Though he could be as direct as a depth charge or as soothing as a zephyr, none will have supposed that, with others like Bill still aboard, the retreat could still not be beaten.

William Ernest Lionel Broad was born 64 years ago in Essex, graduated from Cambridge, spent much of his early ministry in prison chaplaincy - Wormwood Scrubs, high security Albany on the Isle of Wight, Risley, forever grizzly, where every Sunday 300 inmates crowded into his chapel and the governor had to stop them getting in, not out.

He looked - looks - like an ecclesiastical Alastair Sim, held parish posts in Sheffield, Liverpool and Essex before moving in 1991 to Blackhall on the Durham coast and, seven years later, to Newton Aycliffe.

He'd asked the bishop if his last parish might be in Weardale, or somewhere else with hills, and became Team Rector of Great Aycliffe instead. Newton Aycliffe, he smiles, is as flat as Holland.

He is also a master mariner and ocean-going instructor and founded the Faramair Trust, which owns a training vessel, chiefly for those who might never otherwise scent the sea or know its secrets.

We'd first met in Amble harbour in 1999. Unchallenged afloat, he proved wholly incapable of navigating to an even half-decent pub.

Now it was his swansong, the church packed with folk of all denominations and of none and advised of the ground rules beforehand.

The ceremonial would include incense, pageantry and procession - going out on a high, as a churchman might say - the eucharist would be so welcoming to all that each denomination's custom would simultaneously be recognised.

It was probably illegal, he conceded, but if that were Broad church, the bishop could only then be in the slipstream.

"Far more serious than our divisions over the ordination of women, gay and lesbian clergy and various disciplines is the fact that when the eucharist is celebrated, some may take part and some may not."

It was a wonderful and an uplifting occasion, though at one point the unaccustomed effect of the incense became so marked that Bill invited them to open the windows of the 53-year-old town centre church and the hymn Teach Me My God and King might as easily have been substituted with Smoke Gets in Your Eyes.

We prayed that his retirement might be peaceful and reflective, gave thanks for the doughty Daphne Broad - "who at times has probably seen less of Bill than we have" - sang wonderful hymns like Thine Be the Glory and Crown Him With Many Crowns, perhaps four decades' greatest hits.

The sermon, in for a retreat, was delivered at the end of the service, topped and tailed by the story of John Cope.

Cope led the British troops when Bonnie Prince Charlie came down at the head of the clans and, with 42 surviving dragoons, was first across the border when defeat appeared inevitable.

"The only way he could keep them together was to lead them in retreat. For 40 years that is exactly what I have done. All I have really succeeded in doing is keeping the church together while it continues to retreat."

A year later, however, the bonnie prince's army was routed at Culloden, the victorious Duke of Cumberland especially praising his scouts - the same 42 dragoons who had run away now lauded for their gallantry under fire.

Bill didn't say that it could happen in the Church, but that it might. "If it does, God will not have far to look. There are people here who will give courage and credence to a new church.

"The long retreat will not have been in vain. I believe there may - just may - be a future."

His enthusiastically sung version of the Vicar of Bray, promoted because he always did what the king wanted, may find space elsewhere and surprised even his wife. The choir, in turn, sang a specially written version of Sailing, though it is to Weardale, and to the hills, that they retire.

Great Aycliffe presented him with a small but symbolic montage, collected £1,300, which he gave back to buy a table for the Lady chapel. Though they queued to shake his hand and to wish him calm waters, they waited also to tell the man from the popular prints about their inspiring parish priest.

Since time and perhaps tide are running out, the tributes needs must be imagined. Life's voyage may be long, however, before they forget the magnificent Bill Broad.

www.thisisthenortheast.co.uk/features