District Magazine Autumn 2026

Dear Friends,

Welcome to this autumn edition of our District Magazine.

I have shared with many of you that 2026 is the National Year of Reading. So, during a visit to the wonderful community bookshop at Eyam in the Peak Circuit, I was delighted to discover an interesting way of encouraging people to read something new or different. A selection of books wrapped in brown paper beneath a sign saying, ‘Don’t judge a book by its cover’!

Each parcel offered only a few clues: perhaps the genre, the period in which the story was set, or a brief description of what lay within. You were invited to choose a book without seeing its cover or knowing its title.

Of course, the way one person describes a book may not be the way another experiences it when they begin to read. The same is true of the Bible.

If we wrapped the Bible in brown paper, what might we write on the outside? Some might describe it as a record of history or a moral rulebook. Others might describe it as a collection of sacred stories, poetry, letters, laws and accounts of people’s encounters with God. As Christians, we might describe it as the story of God’s relationship with humanity, drawing us towards Jesus and inviting us to follow him.

We might also describe it as a book that gives us language for joy and grief, hope and lament, healing and challenge, courage and transformation. It contains stories that comfort us and passages that disturb us, words that feel familiar and others with which we may need to wrestle.

At our autumn District Gathering, we will explore Scripture through different lenses: exegetical, pastoral, missional, homiletical, prayerful, visual and imaginative. Each lens invites different questions and helps us notice something we might otherwise have missed. No single lens gives us the whole picture, but together they can deepen our understanding and help us listen more carefully to God and to one another.

The stories in this magazine reinforce this beautifully. Across our district, people are encountering God through creation and ecology, art and imaginative storytelling, music and Makaton, science and the wonder of the eclipse. Others are discovering what God is doing by listening to communities rather than assuming that the Church already knows what people need.

These different ways of engaging can help us discover more within Scripture, hear it afresh and connect it more deeply with our lives.

To be a disciple is to be a learner. Part of that is recognising how we learn best and taking some responsibility for nurturing our faith. But discipleship also asks us to remain curious and willing to try unfamiliar ways of engaging. We may discover that God uses study, prayer, creativity, science, nature, music, experience and one another to open the Scriptures to us afresh.

So, as you read this magazine, I invite you to notice what speaks to you, and what challenges you. Perhaps look through a lens that feels less familiar. Return to a well-known bible passage with new questions. Listen to someone whose experience differs from your own.

We should never judge a book only by its cover. Neither should we assume that we have already discovered everything that Scripture, or God, has to reveal.

In faith and friendship,

District Chair Vicky Atkins