25 October, 10:30am
When I walked into St. John the Evangelist’s Church a few minutes late, I was still greeted by a member of the congregation. 60 or so people were in attendance, demographically older. The church building, an old cathedral-style like most others in town, is about to undergo a facelift. Currently, there are two rows of pews with an aisle in the middle, the pulpit is at the front of the choir, but the choir extends far behind it—a typical church in Cumbria. They use a screen in the front and the band is off to the side. The other side has a small play area. It actually has quite a bit of space, and the vicar has plans to make use of it. This old congregation is getting ready for “Fit for a Purpose,” where they are being asked to give £10,000 to refit the room. The pastor’s plans are to remove the three sets of entry doors and put in one set of glass doors, and add a kitchen and youth office in the front entry. Inside he wants to remove the pews, gut the floor, put in a stage, re-carpet and put in chairs. The front of the church has an old Victorian-style cement decorative wall, which he intends to cover with a nice drape and put a cross overhead. He also wants to add a café and charity shop after the entry way. He said that they have a charity shop down the street and it is a great outreach, and so he’s hoping to put it inside the church so that people have to go in the church to do their shopping. It was exciting to see this pastor’s heart for the community and especially for young people. He knows he has an old congregation and desperately wants that to change. His sermon was all about “Change for the sake of the gospel” and he really challenged his people. He gave some disturbing figures: 25% of adults have left church in the past 20 years; 60% of teens have left, and even more 20s-30s. He was a good preacher and interacted with the congregation. He even used a flipchart to illustrate a bell curve of types of churchgoers and their reactions to change.
As far as the worship service, it was a bit more formal than any of the others I’ve been to. There were no song sets; we would sing one and then there would be another element of the service: announcements, singing “Happy Birthday” (with Christian lyrics) to those who celebrated birthdays that week, prayer (as at the other Anglican churches, it was in sections: prayer for the youth [the theme of the morning], for ourselves, etc.), congregational readings (from the screen), and a Scripture reading before the sermon. The vicar would instruct us to stand when we were about to sing, but no one would stand until the song intro was complete. That tripped me up more than once. There were at least two people missing from the band (sadly they were the guitarist and worship leader). Playing were a keyboardist, flautist and drummer. We sang a total of 4 or 5 songs, half of which I knew. One of them was “The Power of the Cross” by the Gettys, and one of the ones I didn’t know was by Stuart Townend. If I know 50% of the songs in any given service, I’m doing pretty good. Many of the songs are by British songwriters we know in the States, but the percentage of their tunes that make it over the ocean is quite low. Once again, there was no offering; the plate was in the back of the room, but during the closing song, two ushers brought the offering forward to the altar.
After the service, my friend who brought me introduced me to the vicar, who talked with me, told me his plans for the church, and escorted us to the other building, to what would be like a fellowship hall for tea. This room is also where they have children’s church. (As has been the case at every church I’ve visited, the children are in the service until a point, usually just before the sermon, and then are dismissed to their own church.) This other building is twenty years old and is quite impressive. It contains the kitchen and fellowship hall, a very nice gym with a second story overlook, and offices on the top floor.
Though St. John’s was formal and stylistically not very relevant to this generation, I really appreciated the pastor’s heart for his congregation and community. From its beginnings, this church has historically been an instrument of change in the community and I suspect that they will be again soon.
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