September 2010

 

FROM BEHIND THE BAR TO BEHIND THE ALTAR, PUERTO POLLENSA’S NEW ANGLICAN PRIEST

 

By Humphrey Carter   -  Majorca Bulletin  PALMA

 

CANON Mel Smith only took over as the new Anglican priest in Puerto Pollensa seven weeks ago and admits that he is still "finding his feet" but two things he has already discovered is that the community has been very warm and welcoming and his predecessor, Roy Greenwood is proving to be very supportive and very helpful.

Canon Smith finds Pollensa and the island as a whole, inspirational, in particular the monastery at Lluc and further down the line is planning on taking some of his congregations on pilgrimages to some of the island’s other monasteries, but admits that it is a bit too hot at the moment.

 

This is Canon Smith’s first full time overseas posting. He has covered various locums on the Algarve in Portugal and then did a two week stint here in Majorca to see how it felt.

"We (Canon Smith and his wife Kasia) liked the island and I decided to apply for the post in Pollensa. It’s a five year contract so we’ll see how it goes but, for the moment, we’ve been warmly welcomed and the community seems very alive and active," he said.

His congregation ay Saint Andrews averages around 100 to 110 every Sunday and estimates that it is a 30 percent split. "I’ve worked out from meeting everyone that about a third are full time residents, another third and holiday home owners, or swallows as he calls them and another third are holiday makers.

"What I’ve recently started doping is emailing my weekly newsletters to the swallows and holiday makers in the UK so they can still be part of the congregation and the community when they are not here," he explained.

 

One thing that is clear having spoken to Canon Mel Smith is that he is very much a "people person" and that stems from not only his experience in the church but also in the "service sector" while he was studying. "We didn’t have much money as a family, so I had to supplement my income some how," he said. "Yes, I guess you could say from behind the bar to behind the altar," he laughs. "One thing I do miss is a good pint of beer and I might bring back a home brew kit next time in go back to the UK. I’ve done my home brewing before," he added.

 

Born on the edge of the North Staffordshire Potteries, he discovered his vocation to the ordained priesthood by the age of sixteen. His father died when he was a teenager and through the sixth form at Newcastle High School and as an undergraduate he supplemented hi income by working in the catering industry. Canon Smith worked in several hotels in the Potteries as a silver service waiter, a wine waiter, a barman and a night porter - "all thoroughly enjoyable ways for a young man to discover how to get on with people and how to enjoy some of the good things of life," he says.

 

Following sixth form, he went to King’s College in the University of London to study theology and to undergo a post graduate year in the faculty of education, where he trained as a teacher. Immediately after his finals he married Kasia, whom he had met five years previously when she was at teacher training college in Staffordshire; Kasia spent two years teaching in a primary school in multi-racial Tottenham whilst he was a student.

From London they moved to St Augustine’s College, Canterbury where he completed his training for the priesthood and Kasia taught in a school in Whitstable where there was flood practice as well as the usual fire practice and where in the storage cupboards shelves were unused below what sometimes became water level.

 

Canon Smith was was ordained in 1971 back in his home County of Stafford and Diocese of Lichfield and served his first curacy in the parish of Wordsley, seven miles south of Wolverhampton. After Wordsley he served as Curate in Charge of St Luke’s, Mesty Croft in Wednesbuary and after four extremely enjoyable years there moved to be Vicar of St Chad’s Coseley, again just south of Wolverhampton. Whilst there he witnessed a growth in both church membership and in the spiritual lives of the members; there was a powerful work of the Holy Spirit and people began to experience God at work in their lives. "God was a reality in our midst and within ourselves and not just a vague belief. There was a varied and engaging diet of church life – annual pilgrimages to the Shrine of Our Lady of Walsingham in Norfolk, biennial pilgrimages to the Holy Land, weekly prayer-fellowship groups meeting in the houses of the congregation, family weekends at the diocesan youth centre in the Derbyshire Peak District, and every year a Holy Week and Easter timetable which brought people daily to worship and pray at this central festival of the Church.

 

"We also accommodated and helped finance an AIDS/HIV support group for the area of Dudley Borough during the early years of the spread of the illness," he explained.

"In the Acts of the Apostles we see little thumbnail sketches of our first brothers and sisters in the Christian movement and what we came across was a community of people who shared life and supported each other. It was in that sharing that the reality of the Risen Christ was discovered; that’s still true today," he adds.

 

His last post before coming to Majorca was working for the Bishop of Worcester as a Diocesan Officer with a brief that covered all the County of Worcester and the Metropolitan Borough of Dudley. "The post entailed working with local churches to help them discover a vision for their future and for the God’s mission in their parish. It was a varied and exciting job. On the large scale I organised diocesan conferences for several hundred people and a diocesan pilgrimage, taking seventy people to the Holy Land in May this year," he said. "During this time the Bishop made me an Honorary Canon of Worcester Cathedral, a title which I retain as ‘Canon Emeritus’ now that I have joined the Diocese in Europe.

 

"My wife, Kasia, and I have thoroughly enjoyed our first seven weeks in North Majorca and we’ve already met a lot of lovely people here in Puerto Pollensa. "I’ve been a priest for thirty eight years, and I continue to count it a joy and a privilege to lead worship, especially the Eucharist. "I am a natural enthusiast and I don’t believe worship is meant to be tedious or repetitive – nor need it be! I do believe that Jesus expects us to gather at his altar-table to offer thanks and praise. So - I invite everyone to join me and the people of St Andrew’s at 9am on a Sunday in the Parish Church at Port Pollenca to celebrate our lives within the life of the God who loves us to bits," he said.

 

"The members of St Andrew’s Church in Puerto Pollensa are a lively bunch! In just the last few weeks money has been dedicated to the Help the Heroes charity giving hospitality and pocket money to British servicemen wounded in Afghanistan. There is also St Andrew’s Community Care which maintains and makes available equipment such as wheelchairs and walking aids to anyone who needs them. "Alongside these ministries, each week during our Sunday Eucharist people have begun to take advantage of the offer of prayer ministry for absolutely anyone – residents or holiday makers – who feels ill, or anxious or who is bereaved ….. in fact, in any sort of need. My belief is that everyone should go away from worship feeling better than when they came; God is interested in all our concerns and the Church is there to help."

 

"For me, the Christian life and, at its centre, the worship of God, is intended by God to be, generally speaking, enjoyable. As a parish priest or chaplain, I believe that my responsibility is to enable that to be the case. Where there’s enjoyment and a joyful meeting with God the Church grows – and that, I believe, is what God wants and is how we human beings find our fulfilment and grow in our wholeness," he underlined.

 

But, while God and the Church may well be growing in Puerto Pollensa, Canon Smith admits that the Church of England is on the decline in the UK for its failure "to communicate" with society as a whole,."Obviously this does not apply to all churches, but it still tends to be exclusive as opposed all inclusive which is what God wants.

"Some parts of the church still fail to accept women priests and exclude gays, for example, and neither I nor Reverend Robert Ellis in Palma agree with that, we both approve of and try to promote an all inclusive Church which is open to all who wish to meet God," he said. "The Church of England has not changed with the times," he added.

"It needs to be less formal and more open," he added.

 

"Here, in Pollensa I believe the community has a genuine desire to move forward and grow and I am here to help them do just that."