For rector Sarah Lunn, it’s only a stone’s throw from the small sandstone church of St James to the purpose-built surgery in the tiny Cumbrian village of Temple Sowerby where she often meets troubled parishioners referred to her by one of two GPs.

Lunn, who looks after 12 agricultural parishes nestling between the Lake District fells and the Pennines from her home base at Long Marton, is not at the surgery to talk to patients about Jesus, but simply to listen to whatever they feel they need to get off their chest – and at the same time take the pressure off struggling local primary health services.

The GP practice run by doctors Jo Thompson and Helen Jervis is up against it – like many others in Cumbria – because it is two doctors down and can’t attract anyone else to replace them, despite the beauty of the area.

A report on the difficulties facing the region indicates that 47% of GP partners are planning to retire within the next 10 years and a third of practices have applied to NHS England for vulnerable practices funding because of the high ratio of patients to GPs. Health service managers in Cumbria are drawing up plans to recruit refugee doctors to work as GPs and the area is offering trainee GPs “golden hellos” of £20,000 on top of their salaries, in a bid to fill gaps.

The free service that Lunn offers is for any local resident (whether a churchgoer or not) who needs to talk but does not need to see a doctor. Quite simply, if Lunn talks to patients who have been going to their local surgery on a regular basis to chat, the GPs she works with find that these people stop asking for doctors’ appointments.

“It’s going back to the way that it was in the past, when the GP and the minister worked together to look after families’ wellbeing,” says Lunn. “It is all about trust. Because our rural community is small and everyone knows everybody, the vicar is not just for those who go to church. I’m the vicar for everybody.”

As part of a scheme called the Listening Ear, the project emerged from Lunn’s participation in a church leadership programme which helps lay and ordained leaders from all denominations to develop creative, entrepreneurial skills to operate more effectively in rural areas. Lunn knew that doctors in her area were hard-pressed, so she sought a placement with the Temple Sowerby practice – and the idea was born. Another three years of development and wrangles about safety and confidentiality issues followed before its launch in September 2014.

Lunn is respected and trusted in this tight-knit, sheep-farming community, because she keeps sheep herself

Listening Ear now comes under the auspices of Cumbria Council for Voluntary Service, after being vetted by Cumbria Clinical Commissioning Group, and involves 12 clergy (including one Methodist minister) covering five GP practices in the Eden Valley. More want to join even though they are not paid to do it.

In Temple Sowerby, patients who Thompson and Jervis think might benefit are offered the chance to see the rector at the surgery. If they are willing, Lunn contacts them to fix an appointment. Most of the issues she deals with are related to bereavement, isolation or making a difficult decision. So far, Lunn has seen 12 people. In all, Listening Ear has helped more than 50. This may not seem big numbers but, as Lunn says, “it represents a shift in mindset by GPs”.

Aren’t there some issues that it may not be appropriate to discuss with a person of the cloth, such as whether or not to have an abortion? Lunn says a young woman came to her with this dilemma. She gave the woman the chance to air her thoughts in a safe place, without it being repeated around the whole district, where everyone knows everyone else. She is clear that she is not there to give her religious views (unless they are asked for) or to pass judgment.

As Jervis explains: “There is a big stigma about anything like anxiety around here and you cannot be anonymous in this community.”

Lunn is both respected and trusted in this predominantly sheep-farming area, because she keeps sheep herself (grey-faced Dartmoors called Pinky and Perky) at the back of her rectory, alongside guinea fowl and blue and black runner ducks. At the parish coffee morning she can move easily between farmers and other locals, picking up news of who is not well, who is suffering from falls in stock prices and who has died. Any concerns can be taken back to the relevant surgery for a GP follow-up.

“I thought we would have a problem with the religious bit,” Jervis admits. “But Sarah is high-profile round here because of her work during the Cumbrian floods and her support for the Gypsies, and they trust her.”

Building on the project’s success, the Temple Sowerby practice has plans to run a dressings clinic in the nearby village hall to coincide with the church coffee mornings, to which people are brought from local farms and villages by volunteer drivers. And Lunn, representatives of the local clinical commissioning group and NHS England have been discussing how Listening Ear could be rolled out across the NHS.

It is not the only intervention by the church in health and social care, as services come under sustained pressure. The bishop of Carlisle, the Rt Rev James Newcome, is developing Caring for Carers, with the Church of England’s mission and public affairs director, Brendan McCarthy, to harness the social support being given informally by church members to people caring for those with dementia and other chronic conditions, in order to turn it into a national scheme. Newcome is the House of Lords spokesman on health, lead bishop on health and healthcare, and member of a Lords select committee looking at the sustainability of the NHS. He is clear that what he calls “low-level” initiatives like Listening Ear make a significant difference to people’s health and wellbeing.

“People have got to get real and appreciate the fact that we are facing a £3bn deficit in the NHS – and that things we have had in the past may no longer be available in the future,” says Newcome. “We have to do things that are not expensive, but that will bring help and comfort to people.”