Christianity from the 43 bus: 8. Gigs and God

 Continuing a journey through London on the 43 bus route - with a Christian eye.  The whole series is viewable on the '43 bus route' tag below.

Like many London churches our church building sees its fair share of concerts and the like.  As a beautiful space in the community church buildings lend themselves to this, especially as other London venues are likely booked up or prohibitively expensive.

Both our building and its concerts pale into insignificance over against the monumental Union Chapel Islington.

This Congregational Church started life in a typical North London way - as a 400 seater chapel for the expanding suburb.  Islington grew at a phenomenal rate in Victorian days and so did the chapel, eventually being rebuilt with four times the original capacity.

It is one of the greatest surviving examples of the rise of non-conformity in Victorian England.

How has it survived?

Well, it cannot claim too much credit for that because at one point the Chapel's plan was to demolish itself.  A local outcry saved it.

From that came the notion of using it for entertainment and notably music.  Big time.  In this respect, being in Islington clearly helps.  Although it leads to several strange anomalies. 

The theology of the Chapel is wildly liberal, but that doesn't actually make for much of a congregation.  Ironically its founders largely derived from people leaving the parish church in order to operate on sounder Biblical principles.

In a kind of full circle it is currently used for the development of Gospel Music having previously been more 'out there' in its content.  It is just an amazing story; more fascinating than spiritually heart-warming, but undoubtedly a reflection of Islington past and present.

Link: You can watch a fascinating video of the Chapel's story here 

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!

Happy Birthday Kim!

Kim Walker-Smith is 39 today.  Happy Birthday, Kim!  If this was the only worship she had sung we would be grateful for her, her voice and her Lord.

How can I keep from singing?

It has been a surreal experience to return to the church building for Sunday morning worship these past two weeks.  Certainly things were feeling pandemically safe, but then again so is the local cemetery (for its residents).  We have some imaginative ideas for worship in the weeks ahead: but singing with our voices seems a distance away.

It is easy to OVERestimate the importance of singing.
The viral rise of the Contemporary Christian Music industry (CCM) has left most of us wondering how we ever found God without five of this year's new songs being sung.  Yet astonishingly we did.  You don't have to be a Quaker to object that God is at work when songs are silent.  Countless believers have spent years or lifetimes imprisoned or isolated in such ways as to render congregational singing a distant dream.  The Bible enjoins and reports praying far more often than singing (especially in the New Testament!).

But it is easy to UNDERestimate the importance of singing.
Most religions have some kind of music and song, but Christianity is full of it.  Whole service forms are based around singing, and whole church traditions defined by its forms (Anglican Evensong, Hillsongs, Gaelic Psalms).  One look at our church building gives the clue that singing is part of it . . .

. . . the organ, the choir stalls, the piano, the drums, the screen (mainly for projecting song words).
Singing, in Christianity, is an expression of the fundamental joy of a saving faith.  It is not a necessary rite; it is more than that.  Christianity is a new song.

World Cup Blogs 27: South Korea

As we saw with Nigeria a few posts back, there are countries of the world where, unlike contemporary England, the impact of Christian faith is rather greater than that of the national football team.  South Korea is one of those.

Here's a Baptist Church singing the Lord's Prayer.  It's a special choral event day for them, but just for the record I am also a member of a Baptist Church, we also have a gallery at the back, we sing, there are more women than men and we use the Lord's Prayer sometimes.  We also love Jesus.  Beyond that  the similarities are a little tough to find . . .

Bono

Here's a quote from Dubliner Bono for St Patrick's Day:

Great music is written by people who are either running toward or away from God.

Here, from St Patrick's Breastplate, an example of the former:

Happy St David's Day!

Kind of the Welsh version of Auld Lang Syne!  Is it just my welsh blood that thinks there's no real comparison?

Missing Notes

I was listening to an organist bemoaning this amazing Fugue by J S Bach (s. 948).  It is not the famous one of the same notation (in D Minor) but it has many spectacular elements in it as you will hear.

It is usually played on the harpsichord.  The organist pointed out that he'd heard harpsichordists didn't care for it much either.

For a harpsichord (which has a much smaller keyboard than a piano) there are a few impossibly low notes.  For an organ (with its pedal board of low notes) those notes are easy, but there are very few of them.  That's what the organist was complaining about.  "It's not really for organ".

What does all this musical stuff add up to?

Perhaps this.  That just because life isn't a perfect fit for us, some talents under-used, some requirements out of reach, we should see in our imperfections the beauty created by the Composer and forget our limitations by comparison.

Backflips

Our church has a limited platform area.

There are two reasons why I have never done back flips as part of a service.  The first is that there is not enough room.  The second - let the reader judge whether this should be the first - is that I can't.

 

Undeterred by my poor advertisement for such an activity we had a back flip or two on Sunday evening with the third visit to our Church of the African Children's Choir (more specifically the 39th African Children's Choir).

 

What a fantastic evening we had! It is one of those evenings that makes me prouder of my faith than my country.  I should be this anyway I know.  I just cannot see how the primary school pseudo-nativity or the Cathedral School Evensong training can hope to produce the dynamic spiritual life that these choirs always display.

 

What I loved was the way that they made US feel special.  This was quite an achievement on their part.  I notice that among other things the Choir, as part of a long, long tour has sung the National Anthem at an Atlanta Braves home game which must make Sunday Evening at Union Baptist Church feel, well, intimate.

 

They have spent a lot of their recent weeks on tour in Florida.  Which must make High Wycombe feel, well, grey.





And as if that wasn't humbling enough, they leave us (and our 168th Church Anniversary weekend) to go to Malmesbury Abbey which was founded before England and over 1300 years ago.

 

 

So, what made last night special was certainly nothing that we brought to the party.  We'll have to put the specialness and the origin of back flips down to God and Africa.

Mozart

Salzburg is very proud of Mozart.  I had no wish to avoid him, but even if I had so wished I could not have done.  As the story unfolded I started to find this quite amusing.

 

Poor Wolfgang Amadeus himself did not like Salzburg anything like as much as Salzburg has come to like him.  As far as the story can be understood, he spent a great deal of energy trying to extricate himself from the mediocre Salzburg Court to become more widely rich and famous in Vienna or Munich or the like.

 

It is nearly as ironic that to do almost anything truly Mozartian in Salzburg will cost a small fortune.  Some people somewhere are making a lot of money when an opera ticket costs over £300.00.  Mozart himself made a decent amount of money but spent an indecent amount leaving him indecently in debt: a few forward royalties might have helped as I imagine his link to the city adds up to 20% to the cost.

 

One might imagine that no-one is more empowered to control their legacy than a genius composer or artist.  Hundreds of years on their work is still being enjoyed, their locations remembered.  Yet human beings are not like that.  They take up legacies and shape them in the way that suits them.

 

The only way to ultimately control your legacy would be to rise again from the dead.

John Pac

The death of John Paculabo this week takes to glory a man who was a pioneer of folk worship which, for better or for worse, is now the standard form in evangelical churches the world over (yep, that includes Hillsongs . . .).  I first heard John Pac and Parchment in isolated halls in the middle of the Suffolk countryside.  No self-respecting church would let the likes of them near a town sanctuary.

Still in the depths of Mission Praise you can find Colours of Day, a folk song that I never really understood then and still don't (so I doubt it's a children's song as performed here).  But what a great tune to inject into lives previously lived in the parameters of Free Church Victoriana.  Thanks, John!

 

 

Lent

Schumann

Robert Schumann is 200 today.



Of course he isn't.  His birthday is.

His short life petered out in an asylum, neither the first nor the last gifted person to live too short a life and despair in part of the short life he had.

Yet as I played Traumerei today (no, the video is not me - he's a proper pianist) I felt that it is better to have lived a short time with passion than to live a long, cold life.

Jesus only lived 33 years and he wept and he shuddered and he sweated as it were drops of blood and he stormed and he cared and he ached and he loved and he cried out.

Chopin

We had a concert in our church to celebrate the birth of Frédéric Chopin.  Why?  Probably mainly because we have a concert-standard piano.  Although on occasion it has been lowered to the indignity of having me play it, on this night it was played by a master musician, Warren Mailley-Smith.

The concert was put on by one of our local Music Societies, one of whose members kindly invited me.  I turned up as that most general of all human expressions, 'a member of the public'.  One armed, though, with inside information that the seats near the back are warmer and more padded than most and there I parked myself.

People arrived, music officianados one and all I imagine, and took their places in the gloom observing the spotlit stage.  Very few seemed at all familiar to me.  Three well-dressed people slid into the row in front of me.

"It's a nice church", said an older man in a refined voice.  His younger companion muttered his agreement at this architectural observation.

"How many manuals do you think the organ has?"  It was not a question that I guessed was usually asked by the church's visitors, but whatever.  The younger man muttered again without giving an answer.  Knowing the answer I was about to venture it but then felt this conversation would be more interesting without me introducing myself.  (If the number of manuals on any British organ alive or dead bothers you this link is the one to consult.  Our organ is IIIP . . .)

The older man continued his expansive observations, "They use Mission Praise".   I braced myself.  I suspected Mission Praise was unlikely to be the hymnbook of choice of my involuntary companions.  But without more ado the conversation moved on . . .

"I wonder how many people they get?".  The younger man muttered in his refined manner - he only ever muttered it seemed to me - again without apparantly offering an answer.  This fly-on-the-wall experience was turning out disappointingly boring.  But then the older man added casually,

"Mostly West Indian, I should think."  The younger man nodded knowledgeably his assent.  I stared.

I stared at the familiar wooden gallery.  I stared at the grand piano on the stage.  I stared at the back of the heads of the Anglo-Saxon with a dash of Oriental audience.  I stared at the dark red ceiling, the shiny organ casing, the lecturn made locally, the wall, the windows, the Bibles in the pews.  If you'd been there I would have stared at you.

I stared because no matter where I stared I could not come up with the remotest spark of a reason why this gentleman and his muttering ally could possibly speculate, let alone conclude, the racial make-up of the congregation that meets on a Sunday.

Chopin will, for me, be forever linked with the vain search for evidences of the Caribbean in an Edwardian English non-Conformist chapel interior.

Pipes

On Monday I went to the funeral of a lady who had been involved with our church many years ago.  The service was in a little village chapel.  The chapel was in a little village lane (we were directed to park in something between a car park and a farmyard).  The chapel looked like a house (as all good old-fashioned non-conformist chapels do).  There was ice on the roads and as it didn't, from the outside, look like a building that had benefited from heavy investment I feared there might be ice on the pews. (It was pleasantly warm in fact). 

We walked in.  The entrance was sufficiently narrow to make me grateful I'd lost weight recently, not a funeral director's favourite kind of entrance.  But on this occasion I was congregation not platform participant and as I finished squeezing into the pew, designed for that earlier generation that was rather less than my 6 foot plus, my eyes were transfixed by the pile of metal material in the corner of the room.

My initial thought was that a local farmer may be using that corner to store old pipework.  Pipes stood behind the single keyboard organ as if they had been thrown there.  Some were straight others at various angles, there were gaps where pipes seemed to be missing, some looked kind of rusty.  Perhaps an old space satellite had landed in the village punching a hole in the chapel roof which was now repaired.  However, in the end, I was forced to conclude this pile of pipes had really been the organ, uncased, disused and left in miserable decay in the corner of the chapel.

An older lady stood up.  Well she stood more than stood up on account of not being young enough or tall enough to do the 'up'.  She had a music bag!  And then the horror dawned.  She was making her way to the pile of pipes!!  I braced myself.  Here I was, with a grieving family and some thoughtful and kind members of my church sitting beside me and I was about to hear the most pitiable example of what passes for church music played on an instrument that the local museum would laughingly refuse to consider as a free gift.

Christine climbed and sat on the organ stool.  She spread out her music. She began to play.  A J. S. Bach prelude floated from the corner.  There were no missing notes.  There were no missed timings.  There seemed, after all, no missing pipes.  Simply masterful music beautifully played by a more-than-able musician on an instrument that my ears told my eyes was not as ugly as my eyes had imagined.

Some chorales and hymns later I was remembering not only a lady I had often visited but (thanks to Christine) also the words of the Lord Jesus,

Stop judging by the way things look, but judge by what is really right.         

Hallelujah (Silent Version!)

My daughter sang this peerless piece of sacred music in her school Christmas Concert. It was great.

But the world is made up of two groups of people. Those who've seen this version, and those who haven't . . .

Christmas

Yes, Christmas can be celebrated in the 21st century!

Stunning

Just sometimes you have to praise God for technology. Here is a stunning Norwegian choir singing in a Dutch church (St Jan's Gouda) in English a song written by an American!

It's my daughter's favourite, and she has good taste!