Church In England

Back in Oxford on Sunday, we went to visit the John Wesley Memorial Methodist Church.  It is an impressive landmark of a building, rivaling the many Anglican churches in size and majesty.

It was a quite different picture on the inside.  The stone pillars and wooden balcony were still there.  The heavy wooden pulpit and old wooden bench for the minister stood at the back of the altar.  But they were not in use.  The straight rows of old pews were gone replaced by interlocked chairs in a more modern arrangement with blue cushioning.  The altar had been extended out into the building so that it almost became in the round.  The scripture was read from a simple metal stand with a banner draped over it and a similar one pushed further forward on the other side was where the preacher stood with his notes.  A screen hung from the wall behind the altar where words and images were projected throughout the service.

The sanctuary seemed fairly full on ground level with the chairs arranged as they were.  Once again, the minister was absent, so we enjoyed a lay preacher within the congregation.  He apparently is an engineer for the British rail system (not the kind who drives the train, but the kind who derives complex predictive formulas to predict how many cars should be on the train and what times the trains should run).

In a truly odd, but fun moment, the minister taught those in the congregation a Broadway show tune.  It wasn’t enough to sing it though.  He had the entire congregation get up and learn the dance to go with the song.  Not exactly a natural experience for a staid British congregation.

The service was much like the others we have attended here, with two small but interesting differences.  I wonder if we might include them in our services at Faith.

When the children left for children’s worship, there was a mutual blessing.  The children said, as they left, “The Lord be with you.”  The congregation replied, “And also with you.”  It was a good reminder that both groups in their own way were proceeding with worship and that their prayers would be with the other.

The other touch in the service was a prepared short reading giving the context of the scripture before it was read.  If done well, and I thought one of these was and the other less so, this prepares the congregation to better hear and appreciate the particular passage rather than experiencing it in a vacuum.

Like all of the churches we visited here, there seems to be a great struggle between past and present.  The congregations are trapped in buildings that were built for a different age and different sensibilities.  They struggle to tell a story that is modern around the physical artifacts of the past.  In a way, that has always been the story of the church.  For we cannot jettison our history and still follow Christ, but we cannot become stuck in history and still meet the needs of the world.