Small Boat, Big Sea: One Year's Journey As a Parish Priest

Peter Owen-Jones puts the spotlight on the village church in this diary recalling a year as Rector of three parishes in rural Cambridgeshire. Far from a cosy rural idyll, what he describes is a grinding existence at the beck and call of his parishioners who often have conflicting expectations of the Church, depending on whether its traditional culture is crucial to them or entirely alien. This personal account touches on passions as diverse as environmental issues, how the church runs and promotes itself, what it means to experience God, and the place of Christianity at the turn of the millennium. In it Peter Owen-Jones paints a revelatory picture of a church going through hell, unsure whether and in what form its resurrection might take place.