World Cup Churches: 32. South Korea

The last of a series of blogs heading round the 32 qualifying countries in the 2022 World Cup - to see all in the series select the label 'World Cup Churches' below.

South Korea made little impression on the World Cup: but the churches of Korea have made a great deal more impression on Christianity over the past hundred years.

The real story begins in what is now North Korea and the remarkable spiritual revival in 1907 in Pyongyang.  There can be little doubt that were it not for 20th century politics, some of the largest churches in the world would be in and around Pyongyang - which has only a handful of 'show' churches under its current regime.

Many of the Christians of those days were killed or fled south and/or abroad to North America as the sad and complicated Korean peninsula history unfolded, culminating in the Korean War.  This people movement brought Christianity to the South where it has flourished.  Unlike in Wales (which we looked at earlier click here) the evidence of Korean revival is still found in the life of churches rather than their buildings.

This brings me to Yonsei Central Baptist Church.  

When England won the World Cup in 1966 this church did not exist.  When I was ordained into Christian ministry this Church did not exist.   Yet, of course, it can trace its history atmospherically to the Christian spirituality of the missionaries and revivals that century ago.

You could spend a long time watching the prodigious output of their media ministries but I have chosen this half hour clip for a reason.    The church was born out of a group of people in a basement who where 100% committed to Christ and to prayer.  And then it grew and grew.  Unusually for a Korean Baptist Church it is also charismatic in doctrine.

Yet if you watch through this worship time clip, the whole half hour (on this Sunday) was songs of repentance.  This is as rare on the YouTubes of churches as revival is in modern England.  And that is the point. 

World Cup Churches: 31. Uruguay

Continuing a series of blogs heading round the 32 qualifying countries in the 2022 World Cup - I will pick out one church in each one.  I am not going to choose only churches that are to my liking.  This is an exploration not a recommendation! To see all in the series select the label 'World Cup Churches' below.

Uruguay won the first World Cup and again in 1950 and though a small country have consistently qualified for the tournament in contrast to several larger South American nations.  Arguably football is what Uruguay is famous for, but it is an unusually peaceful and progressive nation on its continent.

Progressive is not a word to fill believers with great joy given that in many parts of the West it is synonymous with unbelief attacking and dismantling belief, at least in the public space.  Nevertheless, in Uruguay it has had positive aspects in offering freedoms that non-Catholic churches found hard to come by in much of South America.

Allow me to introduce Esperanza en la Ciudad.

The sufferings of the Armenian people have led to them finding their way around the world and, despite its small population, Uruguay has many thousands of Armenians who have benefited from its placidity and freedom as a place to live.

Most Armenians identify as Orthodox but there are also Armenian Evangelical Churches, not least in the Americas, including Uruguay.  'Hope in the City [Eng]' is one and of course they bear the outreaching characteristics of all evangelical churches.  While my church has been shivering with carols on the street in North London, this Armenian evangelical church in Montevideo is giving out foody gifts in the sunshine by the waterfront.  Ah well.

World Cup Churches: 30.Ghana

Continuing a series of blogs heading round the 32 qualifying countries in the 2022 World Cup - I will pick out one church in each one.  I am not going to choose only churches that are to my liking.  This is an exploration not a recommendation! To see all in the series select the label 'World Cup Churches' below.

Ghana, it must be said, is not short of Christian churches.  In fact, even if Ghana started last year where Saudi Arabia is - with no Christian churches - it would still not be short of churches given the exponential growth it has.  New churches appear every Sunday.  It is an example of why, despite the miserable decline in many European countries, the Christian Church across the world continues to grow.

Spoilt for choice (or more accurately overwhelmed and bewildered by choice) I am going for Action Chapel International for this World Cup Churches blog. This probably has more to do with the founder-pastor Nicholas Duncan-Williams (or perhaps rather his current wife) than with the church itself, which is 'just another' vast Ghanaian church (with a Communion table that might trump the ones in St Peter's Basilica in the Vatican).

Speaking of Trump - here he is on the front row in the rather more humble (at least in size) St John's Episcopal Church, Washington, prior to his Inauguration, with Melanie at his side.

There on the platform is the Archbishop, Patriarch, Founder-Pastor and General Factotum of Action Chapel International, headquartered in Accra, Ghana, leading prayers.  Those of us that have not heard of Nicholas before are probably revealing more about ourselves than about him by not knowing him.  

How does he end up in St John's on that auspicious day?  I am not privy to that, but it has something to do, I feel sure, with his wife.  Rosa Whitaker is American, but not just any American (with apologies to the others).  The CEO (and founder of course) of TWG (The Whitaker Group) a US based African Investment enterprise she has served different Presidents, represented the US in Trade negotiations and agreements across Africa yet also worked in various Christian enterprises including Mercy Ships International and Pan African TV.

Or to put it another way, to step into the vast auditorium of ACI is possibly to fail to grasp the reach of this and some other African churches across the world where Western churches have often lost their voice.

Whether Nicholas prayed for the right things - and whether his prayer was answered - I leave to the wisdom of Almighty God.

World Cup Churches 29: Portugal

Continuing a series of blogs heading round the 32 qualifying countries in the 2022 World Cup - I will pick out one church in each one.  I am not going to choose only churches that are to my liking.  This is an exploration not a recommendation! To see all in the series select the label 'World Cup Churches' below.

Portugal is such an interesting country that, despite its small size has influenced all corners of the maritime world.  It is also a country with deep Catholic history, but here for my blog is a Protestant Church - Igreja Evangelica Prebyteriana de Lisboa.  It was the first in Portugal and, predictably, the result of a Scottish missionary's initiative. 

There are not hoards of Evangelical Presbyterian churches in Portugal, and they have been through a lot over their history.  Although this one has ended up with a strong number in a modern building, many are in minuscule chapels in isolated locations, as typical of Protestantism in very Catholic cultures.  What drew me to these churches was something as simple as their default picture on their listings page.

What do you do when you don't have an actual picture of a church?  I've seen many techniques - badges, letters, blank spaces, Bibles, praying hands . . .

Like the photograph above, the default picture for the Evangelical Presbyterians of Portugal's unpictured churches is a picture of people:

Whether a typical Evangelical Presbyterian Church in Portugal is as friendly as this appears, I have no idea.   But I do like the idea that if you only envisage one thing about one of their churches you envisage warmth and fellowship.

World Cup Churches 28. Switzerland

Continuing a series of blogs heading round the 32 qualifying countries in the 2022 World Cup - I will pick out one church in each one.  I am not going to choose only churches that are to my liking.  This is an exploration not a recommendation! To see all in the series select the label 'World Cup Churches' below.

Switzerland is one country I've wanted to visit yet never have.  We've had a lodger from Switzerland, a family member also lived there for some years and I've visited every major country it borders - but I've never been there.

I don't doubt that were I to visit I'd be heading straight up some mountains on the amazing railways for which Switzerland is rightly famed.  But were I to visit one church I guess it would be this one in Geneva - though admittedly Geneva is barely in Switzerland.

Despite the name, St. Pierre's Cathedral is not a cathedral any more because, like Church of Scotland 'Cathedrals' it has no Bishop or Diocese since the changes of the Reformation.  My interest in this church building is simple - it is the one in which John Calvin, day in and day out, preached his way through the Scriptures.

I would be much less interested in its Protestant relic pictured here - John Calvin's chair:

Perhaps the most powerful message from this church's story is that, however great a human season is, it is just a season.  Called by the city to the city to cement and spread the Reformation, Calvin steeped the place in Scripture and the Grace of God.

Intervening centuries played around with this, and almost completely in the Canton and eventually in the city that heritage was wasted away - like the revival era chapels in Wales.  Earlier in 2022 the first Catholic mass was held in the building since the Reformation.  You can keep the chair but only God can keep the hearts of the people as they turn to him; a lesson for all of Western Europe.

World Cup Churches: 27. Serbia

Continuing a series of blogs heading round the 32 qualifying countries in the 2022 World Cup - I will pick out one church in each one.  I am not going to choose only churches that are to my liking.  This is an exploration not a recommendation! To see all in the series select the label 'World Cup Churches' below.

Writing on a day when the 2021 Census revealed that slightly less than half the population of England and Wales identified as Christian, it might be tempting to think of Serbia as an antidote.  In Serbia over 91% identify as Christian, a remarkable figure for a (small) European state.

Unfortunately, this is not necessarily a sign of a deeper Serb spirituality.  The Serbian Orthodox Church is regarded as nearly synonymous with being Serbian.  This part of Europe has been through centuries of turmoil of all kinds, as anyone with the most rudimentary knowledge of the Balkans knows.  For two centuries the area was Islamic within the Ottoman Empire, and a significant factor in the nationalism associated with the Serbian Orthodox Church is the sense that it was and is a bastion against Islam.

This leaves all other religions and denominations firmly on the margins, but one interesting margin has the Basilica of St Demetrius in Stremska Mitrovica.  Despite its very Orthodox-sounding name (Demetrius was a soldier saint from Thessaloniki in Greece) it is a Catholic Church.

Why is it interesting?  Because it represents something about Stremska Mitrovic which long predates the existence of Islam or the Orthodox Church.  This was once Sirmium and this ancient Roman city became one of the Capitals of the Roman Empire when the administration was shared out upon Rome's decline.  In the third century ten of the Roman Emperors came from the area around the city.

As the Empire turned Christian Sirmium naturally became important in the Church too and to cut a very long story short that is why it hosted no less than four (some think three) Church Councils.  Yet strangely anyone may have heard of the Council of Nicea and/or the Nicene Creed.  Or even the Council of Constantinople (more nerdy that).  But few have heard of any of the four Councils of Sirmium.

The reason is quite simple.  These were councils called to try and incorporate a heresy - Arianism - in the Church.  (Arius himself had been previously exiled to this area from Alexandria).

Next week we'll be singing carols in the street about God becoming Man.  Over the road the Jehovah's Witnesses will be proffering their literature - but no carols of course.  Their views are somewhat like those of the Arians regarding Jesus - a man not God.  When we talk of the Grinch that stole Christmas, that Grinch might easily have been Sirmium!

World Cup Churches: 26. Cameroon

Continuing a series of blogs heading round the 32 qualifying countries in the 2022 World Cup - I will pick out one church in each one.  I am not going to choose only churches that are to my liking.  This is an exploration not a recommendation! To see all in the series select the label 'World Cup Churches' below.

Cameroon, with its mix of French and British colonial influences and accessibility in Central Africa, has a vast array of interesting churches.  I've gone topical with the one that appears on this old stamp, but which continues to exist today.

The story begins in relatively straightforward fashion.  St Demetrius church in Cameroonian capital Yaounde represents something of an outpost of the Orthodox Church in Africa.  Sub-Saharan Africa is dominated by Catholicism or Protestantism, but the Patriarchate of Alexandria in Egypt sees Africa as its own.  It has some justification for this given the antiquity of the See of Alexandria (which is just about in Africa - top right corner of course) and predating the Schism with Rome, let alone Protestantism.

Then Russia invaded Ukraine.  No - wait - that must belong somewhere else in another blog.  

But no.  St Demetrius has also kind of been invaded by Russia - and in the mind of the Patriarch of Alexandria so has the whole of Africa. 

If you know a little about Orthodoxy you'll know it is deeply cultural, political and hierarchical.  Patriarch Kirill, the Russian Orthodox Patriarch, has gained infamy for his explicit cheerleading of Vladimir Putin in general and his invasion(s), most lately of Ukraine, in particular.  Both Kirill and his Church are fabulously rich and able to project their power quite easily.

So when the Patriarch of Alexandria supported the relative independence of the Orthodox Church in Ukraine from Moscow, the Russian Orthodox Church declared an Exarchate in Africa.  In other words, made Africa a part of its 'world'. Orthodox outliers, such as priests in Cameroon, who had been expected to work voluntarily under Alexandria have been invited to Moscow for training and paid handsomely to be Russian Orthodox rather than Greek Orthodox.

And St Demetrius and its Archbishop find themselves facing a powerful invader in an ecclesiastical imitation of the people of Ukraine.

World Cup Churches: 25. Brazil

Continuing a series of blogs heading round the 32 qualifying countries in the 2022 World Cup - I will pick out one church in each one.  I am not going to choose only churches that are to my liking.  This is an exploration not a recommendation! To see all in the series select the label 'World Cup Churches' below.

A few years ago I was going about my business in Wood Green Shopping City a mile or so from where I live.  A young woman was enthusiastically giving away a free newspaper and, either because of something she said or by glancing at the paper, I realised this was a kind of Christian thing.  

The initials UCKG meant nothing to me.  Once I worked out that U stood for Universal I was quite suspicious as for some reason that is a word favoured at the cultic and extreme margins of Christianity.  

As the conversation continued it became clear that the girl was not antagonistic to someone from a Baptist Church (of course not knowing I was a Pastor).  This was a good non-cultic signal.  Yet at the same time she was not remotely interested in my church or anything about it: she was there solely to recruit to whatever the UCKG was.

Curiosity led me to find out later what I had met with - as I still didn't know.  I learned that this was a Pentecostal denomination founded in 1977 in Brazil and part of the great, growing exponentially, get-rich-quick Protestant movement in formerly Catholic Brazil.

Which brings me to a church in Brazil built 2010-2014, the HQ of the Universal Church of the Kingdom of God, and a larger-than-life rebuild of the Old Testament Temple of Solomon:

The eccentricities of this campus are legendary, but before we dismiss its (unintended) hallmarks of parody we should note that it has been visited by two Brazilian Presidents.  In its homeland it is a serious business.

You may feel that imitating Solomon's Temple is a bit grand, even for a money-spinning Neo-Pentecostal enterprise.  In which case you'd be underestimating the enterprise because this building together with its imitation Ark of the Covenant is way bigger than poor old king Solomon's effort - we are trying to impress a lot more than the Queen of Sheba these days.  Indeed so much bigger that Solomon's original build was more like a large scale model prototype.

This may seem out of step with the supposed founder of its faith, a carpenter from Nazareth.  But it is well in step with the founder-pastor of the enterprise itself who is 'worth' over a billion dollars.  Though we may want to tease out the meaning of 'worth' in this context . . .

And perhaps it is better to remember that Solomon's temple was not a prototype of a church building but of Christ himself and his people.

World Cup Churches 24. Croatia

Continuing a series of blogs heading round the 32 qualifying countries in the 2022 World Cup - I will pick out one church in each one.  I am not going to choose only churches that are to my liking.  This is an exploration not a recommendation! To see all in the series select the label 'World Cup Churches' below.

For this blog  I'm pleased to move from buildings to people of faith: Zagreb Baptist Church shares some of its testimonies online:

ZORAN: I was so dissatisfied with life that at one point I even thought about suicide. Yet I did not have the courage to do it. Thus began my search for the answers to questions about life that had plagued me. My friends and my environment didn't help me much because they mostly avoided those questions and told me that I was still young and that I shouldn't bother with all that. Dalibor the computer salesman]  gave me the New Testament and a few books which I started reading. I sought the truth with a truly open and sincere heart. And then everything suddenly opened up. It was enough for me to read the first few pages of the Gospel of John when my hair literally started to rise on my head and I suddenly realized who Jesus was and what he wanted from me.

STEPHANIE: After years of spiritual death, over a period of months, I began to think about the truth of what others were telling me about Jesus. Nothing happened abruptly - it was as if Jesus' gentle voice was slowly calling to his lost sheep. My spiritual skeleton slowly began to gain flesh and skin, and God then breathed His Spirit into me. My perspectives miraculously changed.  Now I understand that living with Christ means living with full lungs, that it is a life in which there is no emptiness because He is always there.  When I look back I see that I am truly born again, because the old me certainly couldn’t have imagined that I would be what I am and where I am now.  This is my greatest testimony - I was dead, but Christ brought me to life!

TAMARA: As I grew, I faced many things apart from the fact that my parents were separated. I have even attempted to commit suicide in the past as an attempt to punish my father for what he had done.  I was a very angry person and for everything I blamed my father and I blamed the woman he was with. 

Soon after I gave my life to Jesus, I was in Church one day and a preacher said “there is someone who is filled with hatred towards another person, God wants to set you free today”  I grew so angry at that very moment and I was offended by Jesus that He would even suggest such a ridiculous thing. As I struggled to let go of what happened to my mum, somehow I felt like my forgiving was letting my mum down, but He told me vengeance is His.  Then the Lord asked me to go to this woman’s house and I said to God “ I really hope I heard right because I don’t know what I’m doing here.” How do you walk up to someone's house and say “I forgive you" when they never apologised to you?  As she opened the door I felt something like a fire fill my body and my body just leapt forward, and I just hugged her. I remember as I turned and walked away that I had never felt joy like that in my life. For 14 years I had been imprisoned and that was my first moment of freedom. I felt like I was walking on air. I couldn’t stop smiling and laughing, I couldn’t imagine that I could be this free. I felt like I had not been living up until that moment. It’s 10 years later and I can tell you God has blessed me so much.

World Cup Churches 23. Morocco

Continuing a series of blogs heading round the 32 qualifying countries in the 2022 World Cup - I will pick out one church in each one.  I am not going to choose only churches that are to my liking.  This is an exploration not a recommendation! To see all in the series select the label 'World Cup Churches' below.

Morocco, like its North African neighbours, is not an easy place to be a Christian.  Having said which, it is probably currently the easiest setting outside Egypt (though Egypt is far from easy) because of its latest change of government.  More business-orientated than Islamist, it pays less stringent attention to issues around Christian life and witness.

Tangiers, the city over the water from Gibraltar, has a considerable Christian history, though one scattered with persecutions and problems.  In 298AD Marcellus, a Roman Centurion, was put to death because he refused to join in the sacrifices to Roman gods in celebration of the Emperor's birthday.  Others appear to have been killed in the city.

Tangiers' colourful history has seen it belonging to Portugal, Spain, England and as an International City.  Mostly, however, since the 8th century, it has been an Islamic city and there have been various persecutions as typical of North Africa.  But also, as this church indicates, times of generosity and accommodation.

Set in beautiful city-centre parkland it could easily be assumed this is an slightly strangely whitewashed English parish church perhaps on the south coast of England, benefiting from the historic land-owning established church. 

But of course, no.  The generosity that gave St Andrew's Anglican Church its remarkable setting was that of the then King of Morocco.  The complex relationship of generosity and antagonism between Islam and Christianity would provide never-ending study material, not least in Tangiers.

From the earliest days of Jesus and the apostles there are so many stories of unlikely helps in the work of God.  You'd almost think God was bigger than the Church . . .

World Cup Churches 22. Canada

Continuing a series of blogs heading round the 32 qualifying countries in the 2022 World Cup - I will pick out one church in each one.  I am not going to choose only churches that are to my liking.  This is an exploration not a recommendation! To see all in the series select the label 'World Cup Churches' below.

My disclaimer 'I am not going to choose only churches that are to my liking' has a special emphasis this blog as we look at a church in Canada.  Canada is not really an Association Football nation - Ice Hockey is the thing.  And this blog's church is not really a church - but anyway, here goes . . .

The United Church of Canada is the largest Protestant Denomination in Canada, albeit shrinking like the Arctic ice pack.  Formed chiefly of the Methodists and Presbyterians it began life as a large, generally evangelical and evangelistic denomination in 1925.  In the years following World War II and especially in the 1960s the denomination embraced ever more liberal positions on everything from sexual ethics to basic Christian doctrine.  It prides itself on its breadth rather than its truth, though of course not every church or church member is as spiritually weak as the central core.

Yet even when you officially believe next to nothing, there is always someone who can believe less.  Welcome to West Hill United Church, Scarborough and Margaret the Minister.

In charity, I may find Gretta (Margaret) a charming companion over a coffee.  What has made her famous/notorious (since 2001) is that she is an atheist - and remains as minister of her church (albeit it on extended medical leave at the time of this blog). She has come out and, er, not come out.

Now we're not talking about someone with a few doubts, or to whom God is a mysterious inspirational life force.  Neither are we talking about a building intended for a Humanist Assembly or a Universalist 'Church' with a cloud of unknowing where God may or may not be.  We're talking full-on North Korean, Richard Dawkinesque atheism: atheism, if you like, with attitude in a church building of Canada's largest Protestant denomination.

There was, some time ago, a debate in the United Church as to whether it was suitable for Gretta to continue as a minister, but in the end it was felt that it was okay. (Breadth, remember?).

You may wonder how, without hypocrisy, Gretta could lead Christian hymns and prayers to God-Who-Is-Not.  Be assured that she does not - and her transparency about her unbelief is far from hypocritical. Familiar traditional hymn-tunes have words of self-realisation and community discovery, and prayers are quiet reflective thoughts to ponder.

Hypocritical it isn't, but the pointlessness of it all is painful to consider - an unbelief system offering nothing to someone seeking God: a religious setting and format offering nothing to a thinking Atheist. It shares its spiritual prospects with Canada's prospects of winning the World Cup - about zero.

World Cup Churches 21. Belgium

Continuing a series of blogs heading round the 32 qualifying countries in the 2022 World Cup - I will pick out one church in each one.  I am not going to choose only churches that are to my liking.  This is an exploration not a recommendation! To see all in the series select the label 'World Cup Churches' below.

When I first visited Bruges (Brugge) I was, like many visitors, attracted to its canals, wonderful atmosphere and architecture.

I was not attracted by the church tower in this photo, made entirely of bricks and soaring far into the sky.  Yet as you see, I photographed it. I did so because it is such a monumental thing - far higher, for example, than Big Ben/the Elizabeth Tower of the British Houses of Parliament and far higher than any other building in Bruges.

'Being monumental' is not a great Christian virtue, and this tower is a monument to the enormous commercial wealth of Bruges mid-millennium.

Like any Catholic Church of size it is also relatively full of monuments (or in Protestant parlance perhaps idols) inside.  Yet this is where this church has a feature that says something significant about the confusion that is Belgium.

Belgium is about a third of the age of this church and is arguably at least two countries still, the Dutch and the French, plus a small German section.  When this Church was built it was part of the County of Flanders belonging to the House of Burgundy. Later it was under the Spanish, later the Austrians . . . you get the idea.

The feature in question, however, is Italian.

Michelangelo's Madonna and Child was the first of his sculptures to leave Italy and the reason it left Italy was the same reason the ludicrous brick tower was built - money.  No Italian patron could match the offer from Bruges and so this amazing statue has stood . . . no, wait a minute, it has NOT stood for 500 years here.

Three hundred years later the French Revolutionaries were in town and it was shipped off to Paris.  There is stayed until Waterloo, when Napoleon's defeat and demise enabled its return.  It lasted a hundred years or so until the Second World War.  

Peculiarly it became a 'victim' of D Day as retreating German forces retreated with the statue in tow.  Where had it gone?  A year or so later it was found in a salt mine in Austria.

Perhaps the lesson in all this is that although this is a monumental statue in a monumental church (The Church or Our Lady [Eng]) there can be relatively few churches or statues that have changed hands or countries as often as these!  Human things are never changeless things.

World Cup Churches 20. Japan

Continuing a series of blogs heading round the 32 qualifying countries in the 2022 World Cup - I will pick out one church in each one.  I am not going to choose only churches that are to my liking.  This is an exploration not a recommendation! To see all in the series select the label 'World Cup Churches' below.

Christianity has made very little headway over the years in Japan.  Comparing it with other Eastern cultures like Korea and China make its resistance to the Gospel more surprising.  It is not as if Japan is entirely unable or unwilling to let the outside world in.  Just not Jesus.

The Church has done better than Jesus in one remarkable way.  Among many examples, I offer you St Bath Church in the Centre of Osaka.

At first glance this looks like an English parish church.  This is not entirely surprising because the stained glass windows are indeed from a disused British church or chapel. But on a second look there doesn't seem much between the happy couple and the windows.

Let's step outside  . . .

It kind of looks the part and doesn't look the part somehow.  And St Bath? Who was he or she?  What denomination is this?

The answer is the commercial denomination; it is a wedding chapel built to resemble a Western Protestant Church, squeezed between the outline of its related hotel.  Or as the blurb puts it:

'Reaching out to your heart the minister, choir, organist and violinist play in harmony.  Surrounded by the 18th century stained glass windows passed on to us from the United Kingdom and antique pews we deliver a unique impression and happiness to the bridal couple and guests.'

The point being this is one of many such chapels throughout Japan, a country where Protestant-style weddings are far more popular than Shinto ones, yet where the Christian Church has never made great inroads with the Gospel.

Perhaps the ultimate expression of the old truth that you don't become a Christian by getting married in church.

World Cup Churches 19. Germany

Continuing a series of blogs heading round the 32 qualifying countries in the 2022 World Cup - I will pick out one church in each one.  I am not going to choose only churches that are to my liking.  This is an exploration not a recommendation! To see all in the series select the label 'World Cup Churches' below.

Germany has a remarkable World Cup record - and also a vast array of remarkable churches. I've visited a few and even spoken in one, but I've decided to go for a church that I have never visited.  Nevertheless, given the opportunity this is a church I would definitely go to see - Thomaskirche in Leipzig.

It may look like any other Germanic city church, but the story of this church is without equal.  It was a church where Martin Luther visited often and preached - this (with many counterparts in the German states) linked to the Reformation, the foundation of Protestantism which revolutionised Europe both ecclesiastically and politically.  It became, therefore, Lutheran - the Reformation in Saxony proclaimed in this church by Luther himself in 1539.

Forward about 175 years and a new cantor arrived.  His name?  Johann Sebastian Bach. Bach's influence on music was and is as profound as Luther's on religion and politics.  It is calculated that it would take decades to physically write down the works of Bach, yet he not only wrote the scores, he composed them.  Weekly a cantata for St Thomas's, larger works for feasts and festivals, other works for the three sister churches, and utterly amazing general music besides. Oh, and he had 20 children . . .

As if this church did not have enough in being at the heart of two great revolutions, Richard Wagner was baptised here, and both Mozart and Mendelssohn played the organ as visiting musicians. Sme churches have history, but this is on another level!

World Cup Churches 18. Costa Rica

Continuing a series of blogs heading round the 32 qualifying countries in the 2022 World Cup - I will pick out one church in each one.  I am not going to choose only churches that are to my liking.  This is an exploration not a recommendation! To see all in the series select the label 'World Cup Churches' below.

The Church of the Nazarene, Cabecar Indigenous Region lacks the grandeur of the great Spanish colonial-era cathedrals and municipal churches of Costa Rica.

It is a reminder that 'Church' is many things, and in many parts of the world a dynamic ministry among the poorest of people.  The Cabecar, a large people group forced by colonisation into the southern mountains of Costa Rica, are considered to be the nation's people group with the greatest level of poverty - 94% against a national figure of 20%.

Yet among them Christians have sought to work.  Journeys involving hours of jungle and mountain tracks have been made to run missions and provide welfare and education to improve the lives of the Cabecar people.  Churches have been formed to indigenise the work and in this picture of the baptism of a Cabecar believer as part of the 10-year-old Church of the Nazarene we see the Gospel building churches not with stones but living stones.

World Cup Churches 17. Spain

Continuing a series of blogs heading round the 32 qualifying countries in the 2022 World Cup - I will pick out one church in each one.  I am not going to choose only churches that are to my liking.  This is an exploration not a recommendation! To see all in the series select the label 'World Cup Churches' below.

Our lodger looked at the placemat we had put underneath her glass.

"That's where I come from!", she said.

And so it was.  A quite worn down picture of a castle on top of a coastal hill overlooking the town of Denia.

Our lodger came from a Baptist Church in Denia.  But we had heard of Denia many years before when visiting Christian friends in that area of Spain.  While it would be surprising for any smallish Spanish town in a Catholic country long ruled by autocratic government to have a Baptist-type church, it would be a 'given' that it would be likely to be a group in a house, or 95% expats in a hotel ballroom or the like.

That's what made - still makes - the Baptist Church in Denia so amazing.

In the oppressive General Franco years (specifically in 1957), Gerald and June McNeely arrived in Spain as Southern Baptist missionaries from Kentucky.  They served in many ways in an environment that, to put it mildly, was not conducive to evangelical Christianity.

However in the Denia area Spanish Baptists owned a patch of land - in those days almost worthless - with a view to holding Christian camps by the seaside.

Its a long story that can be read elsewhere, but the end result was an evangelical Baptist church with hundreds of people.  A patch of Spain that had an evangelical witness that would have been hard to find in some English seaside towns of those days (and most of them today).

It is a Church that defies sociological trends and cultural explanations and which testifies to faithful ministry and the power of the Gospel of Jesus Christ and the work of the Holy Spirit.

World Cup Churches: 16. Tunisia

Continuing a series of blogs heading round the 32 qualifying countries in the 2022 World Cup - I will pick out one church in each one.  I am not going to choose only churches that are to my liking.  This is an exploration not a recommendation! To see all in the series select the label 'World Cup Churches' below.

Tunisia has a very small Christian population.  But currently more freedom to worship than many Islamic countries.  It has, among many French Catholic churches, an Anglican Church.  Listening to this YouTube sermon from there I felt it was so wonderful that it deserved to replace any random blogging by me . . .

https://youtu.be/BuakOcxy-Qc

World Cup Churches: 15. Denmark

Continuing a series of blogs heading round the 32 qualifying countries in the 2022 World Cup - I will pick out one church in each one.  I am not going to choose only churches that are to my liking.  This is an exploration not a recommendation! To see all in the series select the label 'World Cup Churches' below.

Roskilde Cathedral is one of the great historic Protestant Church buildings, but I've chosen it for my World Cup blog partly because I've been there and mostly because it is peculiar in losing people who are already dead.  In a Northern Europe where Protestant churches lose the living at an alarming rate, it is a mildly concerning thought that they can go missing after being dead too.

More directly still, this blog dates from the period of the death of Queen Elizabeth II of England (and other places).  Roskilde Cathedral has been thought to be the burial place of a previous monarch of England - Sweyn Forkbeard.

Sweyn reigned for a short time in England - less than two months in fact - though he had been King of Denmark for nearly 30 years.  His short reign was not helped by London which, true to form, refused to accept him and delayed his accession when provincials like Winchester, Bath and Oxford readily, though fearfully, bowed the knee.

On his untimely death his remains were returned to Scandinavia (as we now call it) and thought to be to Roskilde.  Now, however, historians think it was somewhere else - in today's Sweden.  

Then there's his father Harold Bluetooth.  He was long thought to be in Roskilde until an attempt to actually find his bones was made - and none could be found.

During the long procession of people filing past the Lying-in-State of the late Queen Elizabeth in Westminster Hall there were few moments of mishap.  But one poor chap lunged at her (closed) coffin, apparently because he wanted to make sure she was there and dead.  Predictably he was bundled off to a Mental Health facility.  Predictably perhaps, but maybe he knew the stories of the royals of (or not of) Roskilde and had historical grounds for his doubts!

World Cup Churches: 14. Australia

Continuing a series of blogs heading round the 32 qualifying countries in the 2022 World Cup - I will pick out one church in each one.  I am not going to choose only churches that are to my liking.  This is an exploration not a recommendation! To see all in the series select the label 'World Cup Churches' below.

To many of us Australia is - in churchspeak terms - synonymous with Hillsongs, the megachurch operation who we all support by singing their copyrighted songs.  My choice is, however, a much older church from Melbourne.

Australia regularly qualifies for the World Cup and four years ago in writing about Australia in this context I drew attention to my interest in Frank Boreham (click here).  Had I ever visited Australia I would certainly have sought out his old church in Armadale, Melbourne.

Researching Armadale Baptist Church for this blog has been a little frustrating (but travelling to Australia to research it is a little expensive and time consuming . . .)  

One google reviewer - 'Just beautiful - the stain glass and the pipe organ' - sounded alarmingly like visitors to our own edifice here in London. Like many other churches in the 'Western World', Armadale Baptist  has seen better days.  Intentionally or not it gives an impression of being a Community Centre first and foremost, which would be an awkward way to live out Frank Boreham's legacy.

Outside our church here in London we have a Weapons Bin to encourage the safe removal of knives and other weaponry from the community.

Armadale Baptist has 

. . . a series of compost bins.

A quick glance around the leafy area begs the question why people cannot have their own compost bin - but this remains a mystery. As does how to open it  . . .

Psalm 23: A Sermon upon the Death of Queen Elizabeth II

1. The Lord is my shepherd 

I lack nothing  . . . and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.

The psalm has two main characters.  But they are not EQUAL characters.  The well-being of one – the Psalmist – depends on the other – the LORD.

This is a Psalm the Queen – and her mother before her – loved.  It figured in the Thanksgiving Service in St Paul’s immediately after her death, in St. Giles Cathedral Edinburgh and in her funeral at Westminster Abbey. 

The familiarity of this Psalm masks a great surprise in it.  Compare for a moment the (nearly as well known) Psalm 100 –

Shout for joy to the Lord, all the earth. Worship the Lord with gladness; come before him with joyful songs.

Know that the Lord is God.  It is he who made us, and we are his; we are his people, the sheep of his pasture.

That makes perfect sense.  We are familiar with the Shepherd and the flock of sheep (gathered in the fold or dispersed across the hills).  

But Psalm 23 is not about a flock of sheep. The Psalmist writes from the perspective of just one sheep. 'My Shepherd'; 'leads me'; 'restores my soul' etc.  An individual can know the shepherd’s love and care. 

Although she was the Supreme Governor of the Church of England, the Queen often referenced her personal faith: And as surely as it was true for King David of old and Queen Elizabeth II it can be true for me and for you.  Not a general God-Shepherd and an uncertainty about whether we are in or out of the flock.  A personal grasp that The Lord is my Shepherd.

2. I shall not want 

This cannot mean I will have no problems because most of the rest of the Psalm is exactly about those problems.  There are four that are plain to see:

a. Need for Refreshment

²  He makes me lie down in green pastures, he leads me beside quiet waters, ³ he refreshes my soul.

The Queen served us in a phenomenal way for a historic duration.  But she died at a place very dear to her and where she could relax from the hectic Constitutional life of London. Even in London she liked to listen daily to her bagpiper- a reminder of Balmoral!  Part of the secret of her longevity of service is that she did not try to do it 24/7.

What is true for our bodies and minds is true for our souls.  Many people, seeking inner refreshment, turn to a multitude of places and methods.  Yet if we let Our Shepherd lead us this will be seal peace into our souls.

b. Choosing Right over Wrong.

He guides me along the right paths for his name’s sake.

Not only will life’s journey have the capacity to weary us, it also has many ways to go wrong.  It also has paths that are RIGHT. 

No Shepherd choreographs sheep!  They can have choice – but they must he headed away from what is dangerous and bad for them.  Whoever we are, we need to be led by Someone greater than ourselves. In the words of a great Scottish hymnwriter:

Thy way, not mine, O Lord, 

however dark it be;

lead me by thine own hand,

choose Thou the path for me.

I dare not choose my lot;
I would not if I might:

choose thou for me, my God,
so shall I walk aright.
 
The kingdom that I seek
is thine, so let the way
that leads to it be thine,
else I must surely stray.
 
Not mine, not mine, the choice
in things or great or small;
be thou my guide, my strength,
my wisdom, and my all.

c. Dark Times

⁴ Even though I walk through the darkest valley, I will fear no evil, for you are with me; your rod and your staff, they comfort me.

Her late Majesty said, in the year of a major fire at Windsor and of the break up of three of her children's marriages --  “1992 is not a year on which I shall look back with undiluted pleasure. In the words of one of my more sympathetic correspondents, it has turned out to be an ‘Annus Horribilis.’ I suspect that I am not alone in thinking it so.”

More recently she suffered the great loss of her husband on whom she greatly relied.

All of us know such seasons of life’s journey.  The Shepherd is the same, but the environments we travel through are wildly different.

d. Enemies

⁵ You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies. You anoint my head with oil; my cup overflows.

In some of the Psalms the enemies loom very large.  But in this psalm, with this trust, they are simply a background.  Like the Pharisees in the Gospels; the soldiers guarding the tomb and – at Christ’s return one day the Kings of the Earth, they serve only to enhance the central figure – or in the case of Psalm 23 the meal.

The Shepherd reduces enemies to background.

3. I shall dwell in the house of the Lord

⁶ Surely your goodness and mercy will follow me all the days of my life,
and I will dwell in the house of the Lord for ever.

One of the last people that the Queen met at Balmoral, on her last Sunday, was the current Moderator of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland.  In his capacity, he had tea with the Queen and they talked about many things.  

In the middle of this conversation, he said, the Queen suddenly talked about the Christian hope and the meaning of our Resurrection. They discussed a while, then moved to another subject.  In the light of the last week he reflected on the fact that she began her last week anticipating life beyond death.

In Psalm 23 the Psalmist does the same.  Faith is not an endless journey.  It is a journey home. 

The Queen took many journeys in her lifetime.  She also had many homes, official and private, that she lived in throughout the UK.  But she could only, this week, have one home that actually matters.

And that’s our story too.  We all have different ‘home’ stories. Maybe we even have more than one home, we own a home, we don’t own a home, we lodge, we live in a shed (yes, someone connected to our church has done that!).

But actually in the end the issue is about whether we have this promise - I will dwell in the house of the Lord for ever - I'm heading home.

Today hundreds of planes will land at London's Heathrow Airport.  Coming from everywhere, hot or cold climates, rich or poor countries, long or short distances, small or large planes - all that then matters is that they land.

Our journeys are all different; but as for Her Majesty the Queen, so for us each and all, we need a Shepherd in life and a Home in death.   

We need the Lord.

World Cup Churches: 13. France

Continuing a series of blogs heading round the 32 qualifying countries in the 2022 World Cup - I will pick out one church in each one.  I am not going to choose only churches that are to my liking.  This is an exploration not a recommendation! To see all in the series select the label 'World Cup Churches' below.

'La Porte Ouverte Chrétienne de Mulhouse' is a reminder that France is not quite as Roman Catholic - or, following the Revolution - so secularised as might be assumed.  Unlikely though it may seem, the Open Door Church qualifies - at least by European standards - as a Megachurch, the more so because Mulhouse is not a very big city.

Why choose this church for my France blog?

Partly because it revises some views of France; partly because it briefly became one of the best known churches in Europe.

For anyone familiar with the spiritual geography of France it will come as no surprise that Mulhouse is the site of this type of church.  Mulhouse is deeply connected with the Protestant Reformation and as part of Alsace - and adjacent to Germany (today) and Switzerland - it belongs in a different relationship with Protestantism than most of France (Click here to read about it).

For anyone familiar with Covid-19 (that's all of us isn't it?) this church is also known as a super-spreader.  Until the pandemic, being a super-spreader was somewhat the intention of every church, and certainly every evangelical/Pentecostal megachurch.  Regrettably an enormous church conference week yielded an enormous spread of Covid 19 in its earliest known arrival in France and the church suffered national notoriety for a while.

It did illustrate the strange reality that even apparently innovative churches find it very hard to change direction quickly - a criticism more easily aimed at traditional churches.  By the time of the event the wisdom of cramming singing, coughing people into an airless room for hours was established as unwise.  But canceling a Conference or (as we all later experienced) stopping the singing is an innovation beyond innovators.

Covid taught as all a lot about ourselves.

World Cup Churches 12. Poland

Continuing a series of blogs heading round the 32 qualifying countries in the 2022 World Cup - I will pick out one church in each one.  I am not going to choose only churches that are to my liking.  This is an exploration not a recommendation! To see all in the series select the label 'World Cup Churches' below.

Poland is rare among European nations in having increasing numbers of churches.  The land of Poland has an unfortunate story of being a very suitable place to wage war, and as everyone knows, war is a historical preoccupation of Europeans.  Even as I write this blog, Poland is only over the border from Europe's latest war in Ukraine.

Perhaps it is heartening that such a troubled area has increasing numbers of Christian (mostly Catholic) sites.  Here is on such church, in a former Nazi SS Headquarters building:

This Church at Birkenau is, however, very controversial.   It is just down the road, as it were, from the infamous Birkenau Camp - also known as Auschwitz 2. Whilst, looked at from the perspective of Christian - Catholic - tunnel vision it is surely heartening to see a place of such dishonour being redeemed for Christian worship, this is most certainly not how it is perceived by the Jewish community.  And as such it brilliantly illustrates the problem of Church History.

There were, of course Catholic Christians (and other Christians) who died in Nazi Concentration Camps.  But the broad sweep of the Catholic response to Nazism was ambiguity - at best.  Pope Pius's attitude has been the subject of volumes of claim and counter-claim but that his official position was largely neutral is the best that can be said for him.

Hence the problem with this church.  Had it met in the building when the Nazis were there - and challenged them - it might have its rightful place.  But for the Jews it simply reminds them that they were ignored then and ignored now.

Churches need to be good news first and buildings second.