By the time you read this Rupert and Connie Brunt will be very close to the end of their long, hardworking, devoted and often inspired ministry with us.

Our Vicar inherited a moribund parish and decaying church. Another had been the first choice of the Church authorities, but turned us down because the stipend was so low.
Rupert and Connie accepted us in our poverty, welcomed in faith the challenge, and at the end of the nigh on thirty years they leave us immeasurably richer.

First of all, and most important, spiritually - since spiritual poverty begets material poverty in a church - and also materially, introducing us to a real understanding of the principles of true Christian stewardship, so that our resources have come to suffice not only for our basic day-to-day needs but, through increasing awareness of our responsibilities as Christians towards the needs of others, have stretched to include them in our giving. In the new spirit among us we have faith that we can and shall face the great financial and other challenges which are already upon us in the same confidence in God and in our fellowship that has sustained us in the past.

We are grateful for the spiritual insights our minister has helped us towards finding. We are grateful for the now well-found and much-loved building of St. James which has become warm and alive because our minister and his wife brought warmth and NEW LIFE with them when they came among us. We are grateful for them.

At the first Parish Weekend Rupert spoke the words which have remained in my memory ever since as inspiration and guidance. “We must learn to speak the truth to each other in love”. As a cold parish we needed to hear that; the whole of humanity needs to hear and inwardly digest the truth and hope which lie in these words. The sentence goes on “so shall we fully grow up into christ”. I praise and thank God that he sent such a man with such a message and such a goal, for its far-reaching fruits are to be experienced daily in our community-life. Rupert’s guidance - to learn to speak the truth in love and to grow up into Christ - has, through his and his wife’s ministry, helped very many of us on the road to accomplishing this aim and it is only right and fitting that this great truth should be spoken about our retiring minister, in love, that “all who run may read”.

In the next issues of The Spire, as a tribute to a couple we truly love and shall sadly miss, we shall endeavour to trace the high-lights of their thrity years, to recall past achievements, struggles and steady progress. It is not often a parish has the real blessing of having the ministry of such a good and true and Christian couple for so long. In recalling the past we shall be doubly grateful for the present and full of hope for the future.

FAREWELL
As most of you reading this will already know, there is to be a special farewell reception and presentation for Connie and Rupert at the Parish Hall on Saturday November 29 at 8.00pm. This event is open to all who would like to come and show their appreciation of all that Rupert and Connie have done in the past thirty years in Hampton Hill.

The following day, Sunday November 30, which is also St. Andrew’s Day and the first Sunday in Advent, there will be a Farewell Eucharist in church at 9.3Oam. Everyone is warmly welcomed to this service and we anticipate a very full church on this very special occasion.

Source: M.O., the Spire Magazine - 1980 November

Saying Farewell
Address on Behalf of the Congregation
Dear Rupert and dear Connie - for this is how so many people think of you and will always continue to do. Thank you both for just being you, and thank God for sending you to us and guiding you in the guidance of us.

We have not come here tonight to say a lasting goodbye, that would be too painful. We have come to say Fare Well in your future.

After nearly 30 years you are both part of our lives and we are part of yours, it could not be otherwise. So come back to us from time to time to share again in our worship and love. So come back to us from time to time to share again in our worship and love.

Some here may have expected me to spend time tonight on emphasising the achievements and happings of Rupert’s incumbency from the spiritual and material impoverishment he found to the immeasurably enriched circumstances he leaves but these things have been and will be dealt with elsewhere and my brief here tonight - and a great and touching honour it is to have been given it - is to speak for each member of the congregation as their representative and so I have approached a cross section of your people asking them to put down in a very few words what you have meant to them. Each contribution, and sadly time does not allow me to include all of them, comes from their hearts in love and gratitude. All were different - you have truly been, through God’s grace, all things to all men according to their most need.

One says “I shall always remember Rupert’s face and smile, full of love and tenderness as he took a little special baby in his arms to baptise her. I thank God for him and the memory.”

Another “Connie and Rupert have opened up a New Life to me and given me lots of verbal encouragement and love.”

Yet another “For me Connie and Rupert epitomise giving. They are endowed with that rare gift of making one feel that they have all the time in the world to listen. I know their loving influence affects many far beyond this parish.”

One of the older parishioners writes how during her mother’s last illness when the family was living several miles out of the parish Rupert regularly brought communion. “I particularly remember” she says “one very wet Friday when we really did not expect him but he came to us in all that pouring rain”.

“To call on Connie” writes another “made one feel that one was the one person of all that she most wanted to see - and if you were interested in gardening, that was an added bonus.”

Another remembers with gratitude how Rupert insisted very quietly that we should persist with “The Peace” when there was so much initial opposition, and how much it has enriched our togetherness.

“Pigheaded and Mulish” - Rupert - “But experience taught us that when he did dig in his heels he was usually proved right, to our great benefit.”

One more tribute reads “I owe Rupert and Connie a great personal debt of gratitude for their love and caring. In bitter disappointment I have come to them in sorrow and found comfort and often a new angle thrown on an old problem making the solution easier or if no solution could be found they taught me acceptance and courage to face the situation and go forward in hope.”

Source: Margery Orton, The Spire Magazine - 1981 January

Saying Farewell
Address on Behalf of the Staff
"It is very difficult attempting in a few minutes to do justice to the involvement and the contribution of Rupert and Connie to the life of Hampton Hill and especially to the community around St. James’s Church. It has been so varied and extensive. But the words in St. Matthew’s Gospel (6.33) seem to me to sum up their very special contribution:

“But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and His
righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you.”

In this humble seeking after the Kingdom there has been this marvellous encouragement to everyone as a fellow seeker. There has not been any pre-packaged prejudice and dogma, no “snuffing out the smouldering wick or crushing the bruised reed”; but an encouragement for everyone, usually, to listen; wait upon God; move and grow at their own pace; to catch a glimpse of a vision of the possibilities for personal and corporate fulfilment and maturing within the real power and love of God.

Whatever way you choose to remember people; whether it is with brass plates or stone edifices - surely the best and most truly lasting is this: when what they have lived and worked for, those eternal values and truths which they have brought before the people are begun to be understood, then assimilated, adopted and finally lived for by the people. This must surely be the most worthy remembrance to the case of Rupert and Connie.

Writing to the Phillippians (4.6) Paul put it so much better:
“Finally brethren, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report, if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things.”

And I believe that is how we can pay the greatest tribute to Connie and Rupert, by now continuing to live as they have lived themselves amongst us. Although this is in some ways a sad occasion it also is one of new challenges for Rupert and Connie and for St. James’s. Let us thank and bless God for their ministry with us and pray that the next stage of their lives will be as rewarding and happy"

Source: Alan Taylor, The Spire Magazine - 1981 January