Following on my last post, I began to wonder about whether this group might be better off, just practically, meeting in the pub next door which doesn’t have music. That would be okay, I guess. I feel that it would be a shame. [I’m running ahead of myself here – this group might well prefer to continue meeting at our house. I’d be fine with that. But I will just pursue the thought…]
I don’t know why I chose the Fleet especially. Partly it was because I had in mind that I wanted to arrange a Beer and Hymns night on Easter Day. [Still not sorted, but I’m working on it.] But partly because I just felt drawn to it. And maybe it was just one of those jumping in type choices – it seemed as good a place to try as any other and once I’d plumped for it, I wanted to see it through and not spend the whole of my ‘immersive’ fortnight wandering from one place to another.
Since choosing it, I suspect that I may have been the butt of the divine sense of humour…
The pub has a 90s nightclub attached called… Babylon. I can‘t believe I didn’t spot it straight away! But there it is. Much indeed has been made of how the church’s current condition is like the Exile. I won’t go over all that ground again. But suffice it to say, that the optimism, even arrogance of the nation of Judah that their position was unassailable, is not dissimilar to the position once occupied by the church in this country, not to say the West. Now we find ourselves in a strange land. We can retreat into little enclaves of churchiness or we can try to work out how, like Boney M, we can sing the Lord’s song in the cultures we find ourselves in.
I like a challenge. I think it’s better that we stick with the place we/I have found ourselves in and work out how we can be church there, despite or maybe even because of the difficulties it presents…
That all said, I want to reassure any members of that group that I will not impose that setting on you. We can continue to meet in my home. It’s been most helpful to see what it might be like to have some form of more recognisable church there. It doesn’t mean it has to be you/us. But maybe it could be.
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