I’ve never really understood ‘Church August’. ‘Church January’? ‘Church post-Easter’? Sure: the rhythm of the Christian calendar means that there are points when everyone needs some down time after a burst of particularly intense activity.

But in August, for purely secular reasons, so much comes to a complete halt. School holidays, although in this county the structure of the year has changed so there is not such a long break as there was when I was growing up. Parliament goes into recess, and so does the Church of England. Despite the myth that academics ‘have the summer off’, Church August is far more radical than ‘academic August’ is for a university lecturer, where people have to meet their research deadlines; the admissions processes happen in response to the A-level results; reading lists and so on have to be readied for the new term; and re-sits for the summer exams have to be graded. In the C of E, its national bodies don’t meet, but this year, it hasn’t exactly been a quiet month, with ongoing sexual abuse scandals, fuelled now by the BBC revealing the events at Blackburn Cathedral. The discovery of a six-figure payout there, and the fallout from it, certainly made this a busier August than anyone was expecting. The statements issued – ‘truly sorry’… ‘huge strides’… ‘must learn’ – were the same old, same old.

Locally, in my current church, August always means that the choir is away for the whole month, spending at least a weekend supporting a cathedral with their music because their choir is away too – the knock-on effect of Church August. Of course, the individuals who comprise the choir aren’t away for a whole month, and anyway the demographic is such that they are more likely to be taking actual holidays at a time of year when the children are all back at school and prices fall. Nevertheless, no choir. When I first came to this town, I was also in a Baptist home group, and that stopped for August, but they had the excellent idea of having a merged ‘group of groups’ for that month, recognising that not everyone goes away, and some people very much need and value that contact with others.

But even if people do go away, it isn’t for the whole month. This isn’t France! The tradition of closing down for a month makes sense in an agricultural economy where everyone is needed to help with the harvest, or in an industrial centre in a hot country where a factory needs to shut down so that maintenance on its equipment can happen, or where it is better to close completely than have people doing manual work in very high temperatures. But in a market town in Oxfordshire? In a national church?

Our August shutdown here hasn’t been as dramatic in 2024 as in some previous years. Care home communion continued. Some groups met. There was a special ‘Love Your Church’ service to appreciate the various groups and individuals who keep the show on the road. Under our new vicar, after a long vacancy and with lots on which to make decisions, we even had a meeting of the PCC (a friend commented, surely there’s something in the Bible that says you can’t do that??). Sub-groups put in their reports, the treasurer sent in the accounts, and attendance at that meeting was much as usual.

Nationally, it’s another matter. One of the discoveries made in the ongoing research which the abuse survivor Gilo carried out was that a claim made to him, that William Nye could not have been at a particular reputation-management meeting in August 2016 because he always takes his holiday at that time of year… was false. Maybe he does take his holiday then, but the records clearly showed he was at that meeting. When things are tricky, here as in the Blackburn Cathedral story, maybe the August shutdown doesn’t apply. However, the continued silence about the release of the long-overdue Makin report (1563 days late and counting) suggests that in some cases that such a shutdown is very convenient indeed.

On the positive side, you could argue that closing down so much for August makes it possible for national Christian festivals to happen. We’ve only been to two of these in our time: New Wine and Greenbelt. New Wine wasn’t in August, but happened at the end of July. Greenbelt was last weekend. I don’t do tents and I am insecure without running water and loos, and although the spouse nobly rented a top-notch caravan with its own shower and loo for New Wine, I wasn’t very happy and the stress levels of moving this vehicle out of a muddy field put quite a strain on our relationship! As for Greenbelt, we stayed in a hotel. Yes, I know, that’s a cheat, but do I care? Tomorrow we begin our local not-Christian festival, BunkFest, which sees thousands (I do not exaggerate) of people descending on to the open space behind our house. It marks the end of summer, but it is a wonderful community experience focused on various types of music and dance. Like church, BunkFest has become more family-friendly over the years. Like church, it relies on volunteers and on donations. Unlike church, it doesn’t have to worry about buildings.

And on Monday, it’s September again. The church creaks back into what passes as life, more vibrant in some places than others. Courses start up, taking their cue from the academic year beginning again, dioceses offer training, and so on. Buffeted between the patterns of the parliamentary year and the academic year, is it any wonder that the structure of the Christian year – still in Trinity season until the end of October, but with Creationtide starting on 1 September – is not always understood by those in the C of E?

What does all this mean for the ongoing implementation of Living in Love and Faith? July Synod seems a long time ago now, but the Faith and Order Commission is writing various documents for the bishops, with the intention being that decisions on stand-alone services will come to February Synod (there isn’t a November Synod this year, I suppose because the work from FAOC couldn’t be done in time for the bishops to meet and discuss it before such a meeting). The Programme Board will meet in September and will, I understand, have fortnightly meetings thereafter, and I assume we will find out which bishops have been added to the various working groups. That’s some serious fast-tracking, maybe compensating for Church August when, as far as I know, even these working groups didn’t meet, which seems odd when they are supposed to be presenting all sorts of items in February and we know that December will be largely knocked out by ‘it’s Advent’ and the first part of January by ‘we’re recovering after Christmas’.

Other bits of the national C of E will also be starting quickly. The Appointments Committee meets on 2 September, so the people who send out emails to members from Synod Support had to write to us on 14 August to give us notice of this. Ministry Council meets on 9 September and usually sends the papers (a substantial pile of these) just a week before the meeting, so perhaps those will arrive on 2 September too. It’s my birthday so I won’t be getting to them immediately, if that happens. I also have a book being published on 5 September and various activities planned around that; life. It happens, regardless of the Church of England.