WHEN Graham Miles was appointed rural chaplain for Suffolk in the diocese of St Edmundsbury & Ipswich, he made the decision to keep his phone on at all times of the day and night, 365 days a year. “It takes a lot of courage to pick the phone up in the first place,” he said. “And the last thing that someone wants to hear is an answer machine.”
Licensed as an evangelist in 2018, he was asked to take up his current position in 2020 as part of Lightwave, a dispersed Christian community in the diocese that meets in small groups, particularly in rural areas. He recently spoke out about the pressures facing farmers in Suffolk, which involvement in this ministry has brought close to home. Since February, he has supported people affected by six suicides in the farming community. Farmers are also facing the challenge of bluetongue, a potentially deadly virus in livestock, which has led to restrictions on animal movements in the county and in Essex and Norfolk.
Sometimes, he receives calls at 4 a.m. “The main thing is to be here listening to them,” he said. “It’s important that we talk.” The loss of livestock markets in Suffolk — once held every day of the week — meant that there was now “nowhere for farmers to meet”, he said. “And it’s very lonely. Farmers won’t admit they are struggling. . . Phoning someone outside their family does help.”
On a recent visit, a farmer holding two cauliflowers in his hands told Mr Miles that he would be paid 32p per cauliflower, but that they would be sold for £2.90 by the supermarket. Small dairy farmers were unable to meet quotas and being turned away by big dairies, Mr Miles said, while young farmers were battling the pressure of inheriting farms, or being told that the new techniques that they had learned at agricultural college were unwelcome.
AWARENESS of the chaplaincy has spread through Facebook and the local newspaper, and Mr Miles now receives calls from beyond the diocese. The service is supported by three agricultural suppliers in the county, who signpost to him farmers in need of support.
“A lot of farmers can’t always get to church on a Sunday because of their farming commitments, but they feel that I am taking God to them,” he said. “Some farmers say ‘I don’t believe in all of this, Graham.’ But then, when I go to leave, they say, ‘You’ll call again, won’t you?’ . . . When people phone me up, they know that I’m a chaplain; so somewhere along the line God’s going to be involved.”
Mr Miles, who moved to Ipswich from Edgware with his parents when he was 14, and trained as a farm apprentice specialising in livestock before taking up a job running a livestock unit near Fakenham, is currently building a team of lay volunteers across Suffolk. For other dioceses interesting in adopting a similar chaplaincy, his message is to seek people with a farming or rural background who “understand the problems we are dealing with”.
He is supported by the Archdeacon for Rural Mission, the Ven. Sally Gaze, and the diocese’s bishops (“Every chance, they are out with me”). The diocese has the second highest density of churches (number of people per church) in the Church — one per 1420 people — and a high concentration of rural churches. “Through no fault of clergy, some of them have so many parishes now that they can’t get out like they used to,” Mr Miles said. “I am trying to bridge that gap.”
On a recent evening, he went into into a pub opposite a church where he was due to help at a harvest festival, and struck up a conversation with a man at the bar who mentioned that “the Pope” had come in the week previously (it emerged that this was, in fact, the diocesan Bishop in his robes).
Having mentioned during their conversation that he couldn’t remember the last time he had been in a church, the man later arrived at the service. “It’s reaching out,” Mr Miles said. “That’s what we need.”