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 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: 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.

Reformation Day

Forget Hallowe'en.

This is the day on which we remember how the Church was rescued from the institutional hopelessness of European politics and restored to some hope of understanding what God had revealed in his Word and his Son, the Word made flesh.

So let's have a quotation from a reformer.  Here's John Calvin (yes, he whose name is associated with predestination - as any Biblical scholar's should be) nonetheless setting out the simple glories of God's invitation in Christ:

“No man is excluded from calling upon God, the gate of salvation is set open unto all men: neither is there any other thing which keeps us back from entering in, save only our own unbelief”

If the reader is confused as to why election is necessary with such a gaping gate of salvation available, the answer lies (as it does in Scripture) in the nature of the barrier represented in the last word of the quotation.

It's that Day again

October 31st.

Reformation Day.  The date when, in 1517, Martin Luther nailed his 95 theses to the church door in Wittenberg, Germany.   Beset by the Papal money-making indulgences that supposedly bought dead relatives out of purgatory (but more importantly raised money for building St Peter's Basilica in Rome) Luther inspired North European revolt against the greedy grip of the Roman Church of his day.

28. It is certain that when the penny jingles into the money-box, gain and avarice can be increased, but the result of the intercession of the Church is in the power of God alone.

Which this evening we might adapt somewhat.

It is certain that when the penny sweets plop into the bag, gain and avarice can be increased, but the way to change spiritual darkness is in the power of God alone.

Menno

450 years ago today Menno Simons died.

"True evangelical faith cannot lie dormant. It clothes the naked, it feeds the hungry, it comforts the sorrowful, it shelters the destitute, it serves those that harm it, it binds up that which is wounded, it has become all things to all people."

Menno -from whose name derives the Christian denominator Mennonites - is notable as a man committed wholly to the Bible.  In an age when the Catholics and Melchorites, from opposite extremes, sought to exercise political, worldly sway, Simons headed into the scriptures.

More remarkably, and rather like his Lord, there are chunks of his life that remain unknown.  His birth is unrecorded, his upbringing is obscure and his years on leaving the Catholic priesthood appear to have been spent at no fixed abode, as they say at the Magistrates' Court.  Yet his influence was immense as he doggedly wrote and spoke of the Scriptures.  He called warmongers toward peace, the indulgent toward sacrifice and the Church toward Jesus.

All those, now, who accept this means of divine grace, Jesus Christ, with believing hearts, and enclose him in their consciences, believe and confess that their sins are forgiven through his sacrifice, death, and blood; that his wrath and damnation will not be upon them forever; that he accepts them as his beloved sons and daughters, and gives them life eternal. All such become of peaceable and joyous spirit, and give thanks to God, with renewed hearts; for the power of faith quickens and changes them into newness of life, and they walk thus, by the gift and grace of the Holy Spirit in the power of their new birth, according to the measure of their faith, in obedience to their God who has shown them such great love.

Calvin

500 years ago today John Calvin was born.

His influence on the Christian church is immeasurable, remaining so today. Week by week, sometimes day by day, he mounted the pulpit steps in Geneva to deliver expositions of the Bible. Like us all, he had his faults and his foibles, but he was one of the greatest examples of a truth sometimes lost in the pulpit - that God should be given the microphone.

In other words, people do not benefit from knowing what the preacher thinks, any more than hearing what the local supermarket manager thinks. Bread for the soul is served when God's word is allowed to speak and the preacher is but the channel - God, in other words, is handed the microphone.

Sola Deo gloria - to God alone the glory.