the worship experiment: uk, week 1

St. James Church
13 September, 2009, 6:30pm

On my first visit to a church in the United Kingdom, I choose the Anglican church St. James. Here are some of my thoughts from the evening.

The people were welcoming. During the passing of the peace, the vicar had asked the congregation to find someone they didn’t know and introduce themselves. I’ve heard that for the English, this is out of their comfort zone, because they typically don’t tell you their name right away. That’s something you find out once you know them well enough and have “access” to something that personal. But the people at this church were willing to forgo that and introduce themselves. I noticed they didn’t just “pass the peace;” they greeted and hugged one another. The time actually lasted for quite a while—probably 3 minutes or so. My experience in the States is that if a “meet and greet” time were to last a minute, people would be anxious.

The evening service is casual and led by a band. There were about 100 in attendance. I was impressed that a church of this size had a pretty decent band. It consisted of a worship leader playing acoustic guitar, an electric guitarist, keys, drums, 2 female vocals, and a woodwind guy who played tenor sax and clarinet. There was no bass guitar, but even without it, they weren’t bad. I was also surprised that the room acoustics handled amplified instruments fairly well.

There was a time of intercession after the first set which was quite moving. We prayed through the Lord’s Prayer by being prompted to pray aspects of the prayer, and then it finished with a corporate Lord’s Prayer. There was an impromptu 15-minute interview with a couple back from the mission field, which gave a casual, small-church feel. From the sermon through the end, it felt a bit more “Anglican” with a liturgy of corporate readings and prayers, though it didn’t feel formal. Communion felt a bit rote to me, though I don’t think this was true for the congregation. A really helpful thing was that the minister explained how Communion was to be taken, instead of expecting everyone to just know what to do, which has been my experience in every liturgical church I’ve visited. The offering wasn’t taken during the service—there was a plate at the back of the room when you walked in, and then it was brought to the front during a corporate thanksgiving. The people in the room were a good mix of old and young, and both were joining in worship, with many hands raised throughout the room.

They used both programmes (bulletins) and two screens mounted on the front sides in the transept areas; the programme didn’t need to be used if you preferred the screens. One thing that surprised me was the length of the service: it was almost 2 hours long!

The church has 4 full-time staff members, a morning service (an older demographic, but still uses a band) and evening service. They have 302 members*, with an average attendance of 280—150 at the morning service, 100 at the evening and 30 at a satellite church in Cummersdale, where they have a traditional Anglican service, with preaching from St. James (on a rotation basis). They have a youth group, and a 20-30’s group called “The Gap.” They have a good missions program and seem to be active in the community. I visited this church first because I was impressed with the things I heard they were doing. I got the sense that this church is thriving and very alive, and I could sense the Holy Spirit moving in this place. I told the Assoc. Minister that this was my first time in an Anglican Church, and he told me that they were pretty “unanglican.” That didn’t surprise me.

* Numbers received from the Parish Office of Saint James, Sept 15, 2009.