Hello! We are a newly formed collection of parishes who are seeking a flourishing future and want to seek it with you. With your help, in 2023 we hope to move to a shared vision across our four churches and three parishes. We are praying that you are the right person for us. If we feel right to you we look forward to meeting you when you apply for this role.

Our parishes, made up of a number of small villages and hamlets, as well as our larger communities, are the southernmost of the York Archdeaconry and form one of the most rural groups within Selby Deanery. On the banks of the river Aire and the river Ouse, some of our churches date back to Anglo-Saxon times when Augustinian monks settled in the area. Nowadays, given our proximity to good motorways we are also home to new housing developments, bringing in new families, looking for a Yorkshire village lifestyle.

We want to make God’s love known here through the relationships we have in our beautiful, rural and commuter villages, as a missionary people and to worship together for God’s glory. We can offer you:

• A diversity of worship and a broad churchmanship, welcoming new idea and embracing opportunities
• Enthusiastic hard working PCC members and Churchwardens, retired clergy and lay readers and able to deliver lay-lead and afternoon family services
• Five primary schools, two of which are church schools and a co-educational day and boarding school which all have strong links with the church communities who are keen for you to develop new ways of working together.
• Beautiful, historic well maintained church buildings and Church Community Hall
• Church run Youth Club and toddler groups
• Outreach monthly coffee mornings, afternoon teas and movie nights, to support those living alone
• Village fairs and scarecrow festivals, easter egg hunts to welcome villages and visitors and Teddy Bear’s picnics to welcome back baptism families
• Websites and WhatsApp groups to share news and worship
• Shared Good Friday services with our Methodist and Roman Catholic friends and a ‘nativity walk’

We are open to begin a new journey together. We therefore need a priest who will:

• Strengthen links with the community and schools
• Lead, manage and direct a team and be naturally collaborative
• Empower and energise new leaders
• Nurture Christian discipleship especially with young people for future generations.
• Teach and preach, relating the bible helpfully to issues faced by Christians today
• Be comfortable with messy church and all age worship through to parish communion and contemplative prayer
• Help us develop our pastoral care and enjoy leading and preaching at occasional offices

We would like the new incumbent to be open-minded, as well as having empathy with the present congregations and the wider village. Our objectives are to maintain the faithfulness of these congregations and make new disciples of Jesus.

The Diocese of York

The Diocese of York, led and guided by Archbishop Stephen Cottrell, takes in much of North and East Yorkshire. As the largest diocese in England, geographically, the area is very diverse, featuring a multitude of needs and opportunities. This includes the bustling urban centres of York, Hull and Middlesbrough, the beautiful North Yorkshire Moors National Park, and the incomparable Yorkshire Coast; as well as areas of deprivation in some of our urban and smaller rural and coastal communities.

Our mission and ministry relies on thousands of people - lay and ordained, volunteer and paid. Our diocesan teams provide a wide range of support services to our mission and ministry, including lifelong learning for ministry, the care of church buildings, and safeguarding. Together, we are striving to be a people who are ‘Living Christ’s Story’. We want to be a simpler, bolder, humbler church which in its diversity reflects the communities it serves. We are bringing renewed focus and fresh energy to achieving our aims:

• Becoming more like Christ
• Reaching those we currently don't
• Growing in discipleship, influence and numbers
• Transforming our finances and structures

Our approach is aligned with a commitment to the best of our parochial inheritance and to the poorest communities, and to the financial realities we face.

Under current immigration rules, it is not generally possible for us to appoint clergy who are not already eligible to work in the UK.

If you would like to have an informal conversation about this post, please contact the Bishop of Selby, the Rt Revd John Thomson tel: 01757 429982, or the Archdeacon of York, Ven Sam Rushton 01904 758241

The Patrons of the Carlton & Drax Benefice are CPAS who are supporting this appointment.

Appointment is subject to a satisfactory Enhanced DBS disclosure.

Closing date for applications: Midnight on Sunday 8^th October, 2023

Interviews: the afternoon of Thursday 26^th into Friday 27^th October