I know those who like me have benefited from a visit -as an Anglican priest introduced by another priest - Cecil Cullingford - it goes back a long way and deserves to be the Lee Abbey of the North, with an annointed oeumenical community inspiring the Church to serve the people.

God bless and prosper you and the future of Scargill

One of the many benefits we got from one or three years on community, as well as several previous visits as a guest in Stephen's case, was being opened to the riches of Christian tradition. Both starting from an evangelical background we learnt from fellow community members, guests and speakers what other Christian traditions - catholic, orthodox, liberal, celtic - can teach us about following Christ today. We now worship in a liberal-catholic Anglican church, without wishing to reject our evangelical roots. We are aware that Lee Abbey has always retained a particularly strong evangelical emphasis, particularly in its choice of speakers.

Scargill, on the other hand, over the years became more wide-ranging in its inspiration. We hope that the very welcome financial support from Lee Abbey will not prevent Scargill from once again being a place where people can discover the richness and diversity of the worldwide Body of Christ, and that the choice of speakers and selection of Community members can be equally wide ranging.

We are now living in the mountains not far from the sea near Perpignan in the south of France and near the Spanish border.

We are pleased that Scargill has been saved as it were and will shortly be up and running again albeit under a new management team under the bishop of Bolton we read. We had been very sad to read of its closure and believe it had lost its real direction going into a commercial world. Trying to compete with Commerce is hard at the best of times! Hopefully the new objectives we read today will be the way forward.

Diana worked at Scargill as Di(ana) Sayner over 30 years ago. We used to regularly visit Scargill with parish events from Wetherby and Harrogate plus Diocesan weekends.

We will remain in touch and wish you all a peaceful and successful New Year with prayerful support that God will bless the new work you are about to undertake.

It was wonderful to hear the news, and how far things have moved on

It seems a long time since we travelled up to Scargill in July the week after hearing about the closure, and the plethora of comments on the blog. It was a sad and painful time at the ' closing Eucharist ' I tried as best I could to give thanks for the joys (the friends; the people who where more than paying guests; of getting married in the Chapel…) the - emotional and physical - demands of Scargill community life and work that have continued to be a deep source for sustaining the style and pattern of ministry I have exercised as a priest within the Anglo-Catholic tradition of the CofE. As I paused on the road looking over to Scargill, I simply prayed there would be a renewal and resurrection from the then pressing circumstances.

In this season we make our annual Celebration of the Incarnation, of the manifestation of the Divine 'pitching his tent among mankind'. I hope that this year (2009) we can take in the wonderful news that the Incarnate Christ waits to meet him not just in the manger at Bethlehem, but at Scargill's 'base-camp' a couple of miles from Kettlewell on the Conistone road. And this encounter will lead those who are drawn to the Light, to the Word made flesh, to life in all its fullness.

You may know that I was a Community Member in 1974-75 and attended the Closing Service in July which I mentioned shortly afterwards on a Radio 4 Daily Service (part of script below)

Earlier this month I went to the closing service at Scargill House, a retreat and conference centre run by a Christian community in the heart of the Yorkshire Dales. It was founded through the vision of a group of friends - including Donald Coggan when he was Bishop of Bradford in the 1950s - and over the years it's welcomed many thousands of guests who've been inspired particularly by the light and airy chapel built on the hillside in Scandinavian style with spectacular views over the surrounding fields and woodlands. The Farewell Eucharist was inevitably a sad occasion - Scargill's financial difficulties had become impossible to resolve - but there were uplifting testimonies to the power and witness of the place in the past. In recent times, it's been a meeting point for different perspectives and dialogue as communities and individuals grapple with contemporary issues. And during that final thanksgiving service there was a stirring account of what happened there when groups of children from different religious and cultural backgrounds came together as well as reminders of how Scargill had offered hospitality to refugees and asylum seekers. But above all, the sensitively led worship that afternoon emphasised the importance of community, of human relationships, and how God is to be found in the gift of human love. God's energy can be embraced in the way we relate with a partner, with friends, family - with anyone for whom we dislocate our selfish centre and allow that other person to find a place there instead. The birth of a child, the death of someone dearly loved, expressions of shared affection, the joy of eating together, talking, laughing and crying with someone who's begun to understand us - all these and many other human encounters reveal that we live on fragile and holy ground in which the vulnerable love of God is to be found. That was my experience, also the experience of the girl who became my wife 30 years ago - and many many others' - and we discovered it first while living in community at Scargill House.

Jesus himself spoke about the importance of human relationships, with each other and with God. The idea of friendship with Jesus is unique. What other religion invites people to be friends with God? The status of a believer is that of a friend of Jesus and a child of God. And these concepts of friendship and family evoke images of intimacy, trust and belonging - how important they all are to our wellbeing! This is what Jesus said to his disciples as recorded in John's Gospel Chapter 15:

'This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. No one has greater love than this, to lay down one's life for one's friends. You are my friends if you do what I command you. I do not call you servants any longer, because the servant does not know what the master is doing; but I have called you friends, because I have made known to you everything that I have heard from my Father. You did not choose me but I chose you. And I appointed you to go and bear fruit, fruit that will last, so that the Father will give you whatever you ask him in my name. I am giving you these commands so that you may love one another.'