Holy Ground on Your Doorstep

High in the hills above Buxton, past the ruins of a hall that was pulled down long ago, there is a small round shrine of stone with a low oak door. The door is never locked. Walkers find it almost by accident, duck inside, and leave flowers, folded notes and prayers. Inside, a slab of marble remembers a Spanish woman who came to the valley more than a century ago. Nobody organises this. Nobody advertises it. People simply keep coming.

That shrine in the Goyt Valley is one of eighteen places we'll be taking you to this summer, in a trail we're calling Holy Ground on Your Doorstep. Some are hidden, like that one. Others you may have walked past a hundred times. A cathedral on the Derby Road. An abbey in the Charnwood hills where monks still rise in the dark to pray. A Nottinghamshire field where two of the first men to die in the English Reformation once learned to keep silence.

Bishop Patrick has asked our whole diocese to build everything on three words: encounter, discipleship, mission. They are the heart of his plan for us, Go, Make Disciples. And the idea behind this trail is a simple one. Those three words are not a new programme dreamt up in an office. They are a pattern that has already been lived, again and again, on the very ground beneath our feet. Lived by a nurse, a village priest, a workshop of stone carvers, monks, martyrs, and a bishop who kept a pet swan. People who met God and knew that they were loved by Him. People who followed Him, faithfully, mostly in hidden ways. People whose ordinary lives became a witness, and who are still remembered today.

And here is the heart of this summer’s campaign. This call was never a call on their lives only. It is the same call, on ours: on this same ground, right here in the East Midlands. You don't have to cross a sea or catch a flight to make a pilgrimage. For most of us, holy ground is within just an hour of our front door.

So, two invitations. The first is to journey with us. From the feast of St James on 25 July through to early September, we'll share a new place every few days, right here on the diocese's social media. Follow along, and see how much holy ground you've walked straight past.

The second is the one we're really hoping you'll get involved with. Go and visit one of these places this summer. Visit a shrine, sit for a while in a quiet church, walk a stretch of a pilgrim way. Take a photo of whatever you find, tag us, and add #HolyGroundNotts We would love to share your pilgrimage with the rest of the diocese.

Every person you will meet on this trail lived the same pattern: they encountered the love of God, they followed Him, and their ordinary lives became a witness to it. That isn't simply history. It's an invitation: the same one, on this same ground, in our own diocese, today. Every one of them took a step closer to Christ. This summer, why not do the same?