COULD A WHIT WALK REVIVAL WORK FOR PARISH EVANGELISM?

For many people who grew up in South Yorkshire in the 1940s and '50s, the Whit Walks are a memorable part of their childhood.

They were a prominent feature of Christian Britian, certainly in this region, before their demise in the 1960s and '70s. The Sunday Schools would parade through the streets of their local communities displaying their banners with the children wearing their new summer clothes. People in this parish have fond memories of the Whit Walk through the villages.

In fact, there was even an attempt by a lady in her 30s on our PCC, whose mother has fond memories of the Whit Walk, to revive it as a churches together event in the parish. Cranmer's Curate put the suggestion to the other churches on the local Christian council but there was not much enthusiasm.

Your curate remembers the Archdeacon of Sheffield, Richard Blackburn, saying on one occasion at a Service of Visitation in the Cathedral that what used to happen in our churches but now no longer does is 'safe in God's hands'. That perspective is surely a very helpful way of freeing people from the tyranny of the past and liberating us to try new things for the Gospel.

Having said that, retro can work, hence the success of the Back to Church Sunday initiative. Maybe a Whit Walk revival could work in this community, culminating in a picnic where there would be a clear proclamation of the living Christ.

The wonderful BCP Collect for Whit Sunday is so very pertinent for local churches faced with the challenge of coming up with imaginative ways of reaching our communities for Christ:

God, who as at this time didst teach the hearts of thy faithful people, by the sending to them the light of thy Holy Spirit; Grant us by the same Spirit to have a right judgement in all things, and evermore to rejoice in his holy comfort; through the merits of Christ Jesus our Saviour, who liveth and reigneth with thee, in the unity of the same Spirit, one God, world without end. Amen.