The City celebrated its centenary on 5 June this year, that being the day when, one hundred years ago, the King appeared at the railway station and proclaimed that this was no longer just a loose collection of Midlands towns or a humble borough but a city. Now, as of 2025, 5 June shall ever be commemorated as Stoke-on-Trent Day. Put it in your diary for next year. The centenary celebrations are ongoing, but the churches gathered for a huge prayer breakfast in the King’s Hall on the day and in Stoke Minster for a civic service on the following Sunday.
It was a joy for me to join the people of St John’s, Mayfield on the Sunday before Stoke’s birthday celebrations, to commemorate with them the 900th anniversary of their parish church. Together, we gave thanks for nine centuries of Christian worship and witness in that village community.
Anniversaries are important to us. Even in later years, when it feels it comes around a little sooner that we might wish, we still like to observe our birthday. A Golden Wedding anniversary is a wonderful opportunity to celebrate a marriage and the power of love, just as the visit to the grave on the anniversary of a death is a way of remembering the beloved dead with thanksgiving.
Anniversaries help orientate us in time. As we look back, we remember who we and where we have come from.
Even in this “ordinary time” of the church’s year, the days are peppered with commemorations and Saints’ days, times for reflection and thanksgiving.
At Holy Communion, we recall God’s mighty saving acts in history and in our own lives with gratitude and joy. We celebrate how God’s grace has shaped us, and we give thanks for God’s unswerving faithfulness, the “potentate of time” who made us and redeemed us.
But anniversaries and commemorations, whether they mark a recent event or one long past, ask questions too about the present and the future. I could not but help sit in Mayfield church and wonder what the next 900 years would hold. In the past century, Stoke has undergone massive change as the pottery industry has declined and the pits have closed. What about the next hundred years? What will become of the City and its people?
And as we gather at the Lord’s table and remember what God has done for us in Christ Jesus, we do not only look back. Here we are sustained for the present and for what is to come. We commit to “work together for that day” when God’s kingdom comes and we are sent out in the power of the Spirit to live to God’s “praise and glory”.
Anniversaries tell us where we come from and about the moments that have shaped us along the way. But such commemorations also pose the challenge of facing what is yet to be. We are creatures of time, but we worship a God who is, as the hymn says, our “Lord, for the years”, and we pray that God may “for the future take us… to live for Christ alone.”
+Matthew Parker
Bishop of Stafford
Photos: Stoke City Prayer Breakfast: Saltbox. Mayfield: Dr. Vidya Amarapala