The Church of England has teamed up with Country Life magazine to hunt for an elusive species: the unsung hero!

Rural churches and chapels are often the thriving hubs of their communities. Together, Country Life and the Church of England are looking for the unsung volunteers - of any denomination - who keep them alive.

The competition – to be launched in the magazine’s Easter edition – will be seeking the volunteers who keep rural churches, chapels and churchyards thriving and at the centre of their communities.

The aim is to highlight the wide range of voluntary activities taking place in and around those buildings – from maintaining the fabric against all odds to developing and taking forward an imaginative community use of the building.

As the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, writes in a special Country Life article to launch the competition: “In our countryside, armies of unsung heroes are keeping the circulation going in the community’s body.

"They are organising community celebrations and simple local services like mothers and toddlers groups or drop-in centres. But they are increasingly stepping into the gaps that have opened up in rural society in the last ten years or so.”

The Easter Country Life will include all the details of the Unsung Heroes competition, an entry form and instructions on how to submit nominations. Groups of church or chapel members can get together to nominate their own special Hero.

In previous years, Country Life has run competitions about churches being used to serve the wider community.

“This year’s is quite different: it is about people,” says Archbishops’ Council member Anne Sloman. “It is about the volunteers who keep country churches alive. That might be the organist, the flower arranger, the cleaner, the person who keeps the churchyard under control.

“Their heroism might be linked to children's activities or anything else taking place in the building: but it isn't about projects so much as the heroes who run them.”

The competition aims to highlight the wide range of voluntary activities taking place in and around churches and chapels and their churchyards, ranging from maintaining the historic fabric to developing or managing imaginative community initiatives. And all this in addition to being places of worship and vital oases of calm and reflection in a busy world.

Nominations are sought for volunteers who:

- have initiated and taken forward projects which support the church building directly such as fund-raising activities or rejuvenating the churchyard
- help keep the building open as a valuable community resource by organising events such as weekly community lunches or concerts inside the church
- manage the setting up of a community shop, farmers’ market or post office, again inside the church or its grounds.

For more information, tel 020 7898 1621 or email mailto:louis.henderson@c-of-e.org.uk