Sorry to Give the Wrong Impression...
Having services in the Village Hall while our church was being redecorated was something special. It was good to enjoy the hospitality of the village – and so in a way, to get a little bit closer. So often we have felt we wanted to be more a part of village life. It’s a strange, rather sad fact that over the years we have had folk from the village in our congregation, but somehow they have never stayed for long. It is partly the price we have to pay for being a ‘free’ church, in our case, Baptist. Quite a lot of people - and you, dear reader, may be one - wonder why we exist at all, what is the point of all these different denominations?
Perhaps this is a good time for some explanation! Of course, one reason is the sheer immensity and variety of the God we are dealing with. The Hindu story of the four blind men and the elephant helps: each bumped into a different part. The first said an elephant was strong and upright, like a pillar, and then another insisted it was like a large palm leaf, but one of the others said it was more like a rope, and the last said no, it was more lively than that, like a snake.
Christians are a bit like that. Trouble is, that there’s no end to the discoveries you can make about God, and the effect of even one can be so overwhelming that at first everything else can fade into insignificance; we can feel we’ve really ‘got’ it at last. And of course that will express itself in the way that we worship. But then, later on... But Christians are beginning to realise at last that they need each other now. For instance, think of the ways Anglicans and Baptists worship. For the Anglican tradition, God is the high and holy One, Lord of history and of the nations, especially our own. So the buildings soar into the heavens; the worship is solemn and ordered, conducted by someone specially qualified, using language and symbols that reach right back over nearly two thousand years. By contrast, Baptists think of God as mainly One who meets us where we are, in the ordinary, familiar affairs of life as we know it today. So the building is more utilitarian, the service informal, intimately personal, almost anyone can conduct it, using the language and symbols of everyday life. Both have their strength, but also their weakness. The one can slide into mere ritualism, having very little connection with shopping and TV and family; the other can easily become trivial, losing the awe, the fear of the Lord that is the beginning of wisdom. Paul wrote once that we’re like a body, and we all need each other. Please forgive us if we don’t always act like that.
John Peck