Chaplain's Annual Report 2025

As we gather to reflect on the events of the past year, I remain thankful for the resilience and adaptability of our faith community, and for the support and service of those who enrich the life of our chaplaincy in many ways. Despite challenges, worship remains the cornerstone of our ministry, both in person and on line. Here are some of the main developments of the past year, by way of wondering what has happened since the last annual meeting in April 2024.

Some highlights might be the annual return of the Gwent touring band in April; the celebration of Saint George’s Day on the Isla del Rey; the Retreat (theme: Joy is a Kingdom of Justice and Peace) organised by and for the chaplaincies of the Northern Spain & Balearics Deanery at the end of May; the British Ambassador’s retirement gathering in June; the annual blessing of the Anglo-American cemetery at Cala Llonga, also in June; the annual Fiesta of Santa Margarita fiesta in July; the golf tournament in September; Christmas worship, especially what seems to have become an annual, anarchic, but joyful family celebration on Christmas Eve; an ecumenical service for the week of prayer for Christian Unity with Bishop Gerard of the Roman Catholic diocese of Menorca in January; and the World Day of Prayer service in early March. It was also a delight to be invited in April to the ordination to the priesthood of a local young man, Jaume Denclar, whom I have known since he came for help in learning English when he was a secondary school student.

Regular worship has been complemented by seasonal worship, not only at Christmas, but also for Harvest Thanksgiving, All Saints, All Souls, Remembrance and the New Year. Oddly, because of the moveable date of Easter and our earlier annual meeting, we have not celebrated Easter during this time! The weekend of our annual meeting, coinciding with the third Sunday of Lent, marks five years of worship on line, offered by YouTube on Sundays and Zoom on Fridays. Worship in the Ciutadella area has continued, and because the weather has generally been cooperative, we have been using the outdoor chapel at Cala’n Bosc throughout the year.

Having learned during the pandemic that social contact is not a trivial matter, especially for those who live alone, we have continued to do our best to ensure that this is given appropriate attention, whether through the refreshment time after our worship services, or visits to those who wish to be visited, or the lunches that we have been fortunate to share almost every month with not only resident members of our community but also both regular and occasional visitors. It might be worth noting that for many visitors this is where the face of Santa Margarita is observed. The monthly articles for Roqueta magazine (https://roquetamagazine.net/) also serve to highlight the work of our chaplaincy.

Last year the Chaplaincy Council adopted a policy for outreach and giving that we have endeavoured to follow during the year, most notably with 90 food vouchers donated via the Red Cross at Christmas, and financial support for two students in Peru.

During Lent this year, as many will already know, we have two opportunities for study and reflection: on Wednesdays, celebrating the 1700th anniversary of the Council of Nicaea, from which we derive the eponymous creed that is used in worship; and on Thursdays, via Zoom, a series exploring different types of prayer.

We have improved the infrastructure of our chaplaincy, if that is the right word, in several ways, following the repainting of the church at the end of 2023. The chaplaincy web site was completely renewed during the course of the year. The printer/copier in the sacristy has been replaced. We have a digital card reader for donations which is now fully functional after a period of inactivity while we satisfied the need for additional paperwork. Our regular visiting organist, Melanie Plumley, graciously replaced two speakers in our organ that were sounding a little odd. And thanks to a generous donation in memory of John Yallop, we have replaced the amplifier and loudspeakers in the church, which seems to have resulted in a notable improvement in sound quality.

There were just seven wedding blessings during 2024, as well as one marriage service. There were eight funeral, memorial or cremation services. And there were five baptisms, plus the thanksgiving for the birth of a child - and the blessing of a pregnant mother, who was duly safely delivered later in the year.

In terms of Area Dean responsibilities, I have organised gatherings of the regional clergy in Barcelona in May and Mallorca in October. The Area Deans of the diocese had a meeting with the Bishop in June, and Area Deans of our Archdeaconry, and Italy and Malta gathered with the Archdeacon in November. The Costa Brava chaplaincy is still in vacancy so as well as occasional support for the wardens, I provide a weekly sermon video. Also, two or three times a month, I send the text of the week’s sermon to the chaplaincy of Rabat in Morocco. The chaplaincy of Puerto Pollença in Mallorca is in vacancy and I am doing my best to steer them through the process of finding a new chaplain.

And, finally, I’ve lost count of how many life certificates, primarily for the UK Department of Work and Pensions, I have stamped and signed as word got around that I would oblige!

We continue to face the challenges that I mentioned last year, such as dwindling congregations, especially during the winter, and the lack of youth and family ministry. Nevertheless, reflecting upon the past year has reinforced an important aspect of the ministry that we share in this chaplaincy, which is that it is our responsibility to sow seeds and to provide a nurturing environment for them to grow. We are a church, and so we do this as followers of Christ, which brings together a combination of faith, witness and hospitality.

So what guiding principles should we be following as we do this? Well as many of you may know, I find great sustenance and encouragement in a verse from the Hebrew Scriptures, where the prophet Micah writes: ‘What does the Lord require of you, but to do justice, to love kindness (sometimes stated as mercy) and to walk humbly with your God.’ It’s good that we try to do things in the right way and that we appreciate the blessings of being a part of an Anglican church and communion that provides us with meaningful worship and organisational structure, because, to be honest, stand-alone congregations eventually tend towards anarchy! But over-riding all of that is the call to justice, kindness and humility in our relationship with our creator and our fellow Christians. Especially kindness. This is the underlying principle for Jesus’ admonition to love our neighbours as ourselves.

So as we move towards another annual chapter in our life together as a chaplaincy, let’s remember to uplift kindness in what we do and the way in which we do it. And let’s remember that this chaplaincy has many people who contribute to its worship and ministry, including the warden, the chaplaincy council members, the contributors to worship in person and via recordings, those whose artistic skills contribute to the beauty of our worship space, and especially the chaplain’s lovely wife. Thanks be to God for all of you. Let us continue to sow the seeds of Anglican Christian faith in Menorca by our word and example.

An Afterthought

This occurred to me after I had prepared the report above. One of the things with which we need to come to grips as a chaplaincy - and this will be food for thought for the new council - is exactly who we are as a community. I detect a certain hesitation to recognise that the Anglican Church in Menorca, Santa Margarita, can no longer be defined as the people who sit in the pews regularly on a Sunday or Wednesday. The bulk of our worshippers, if we look across the whole year, are those who don’t live in Menorca. They may come regularly because they have a second home on the island, or they may be tourists. And beyond that, 151 people receive a weekly e-mail with details of worship plus other occasional news, and some of those forward it to others; plus the recorded worship service is viewed by between 40 and 70 people on a regular basis, which is rather more than the Sunday congregation for most of the time. They are people who enrich us and who are generous, in many ways. So we can no longer afford to think of a sort of us-and-them community, because the boundaries are diffuse and becoming more so. When we do things, whether it is worship, or social gathering, or communication, the extended part of our community is part of who we are, part of our inclusive community of faith. As those who have read the Synod reps’ report will have noticed, Synod was reminded that we are all members of God’s household: ‘all of us or none of us.’ There is already too much tribalism in our world; there is no ‘us’ and ‘them;’ there is only ‘us.’ And we should be thankful for that.