The Bishop of Wakefield, the Rt Revd Nigel McCulloch, last weekend launched Church in Community, a new initiative aimed at highlighting existing links and forging new relationships between the church and community.

"People often say to me that the church is out of touch, increasingly irrelevant, no longer meaningful. But Church in Community will highlight the extraordinarily diverse links that the Wakefield Diocese and indeed the whole Church of England has throughout the community it serves," said the Bishop of Wakefield this week.

During 1999, in time for the next millennium, Bishop McCulloch also intends to visit every parish in his Diocese and hopes that Church in Community will set the scene for a period of solid bridge-building between various sections of the community including education, industry, the arts, police and emergency services.