‘Harmony’ is a new worshipping community based at St Mary’s Church, Boston Spa which brings together deaf, hearing impaired and hearing people to eat and worship together. Harmony runs on the second Sunday of each month starting at 12.30pm with a light lunch (usually soup then cake) and lasts around two hours.
The congregation uses a blend of communication styles, combining BSL, lip reading, speech, and live transcription software. While this makes things move quite slowly, it means that everyone is able to contribute to the Bible discussion and prayer sharing times. One unexpected outcome of the way the worship is led is that a couple of people who have dementia attend and find this slower pace of things suits them, even though they are more at home with traditional liturgy.
The group started meeting in July following discussions between the Revd Nick Morgan, vicar of St Mary’s, and Christine Shaw who is also part of the team at ‘Connections’ café church, part of St Mary’s Multiply project. Christine is deaf, and her vision was for deaf and hearing people to eat and worship together. For Christine, it was crucial that, while the worshipping community would grow out of deaf people’s culture, this was not to be a group solely for deaf people – hearing people were very much part of the vision.
Nick says, “To paraphrase Galatians 3:28, in Christ there is no deaf or hearing, for all of us are one in Christ Jesus!
“As a hearing person I think of the word ‘harmony’ as all about sound, so it isn’t a word I would ever have come up with for a group co-led by deaf people, but for Christine it was the obvious word: people who have different cultures of communication working in harmony to create a way of worshipping led by deaf culture, but inclusive of those who hear. I, and others who are not deaf, are the ones for whom reasonable adjustments are being made at Harmony so we can participate. It is an eye opener as one of the worship leaders to be the one who is on the steep learning curve – and I do get heckled a lot in BSL!”
The next Harmony service takes place on 10th November at 12.30pm, marking Remembrance Sunday.
To find out more, contact bramhambenefice@outlook.com.
