This is not strictly part of a church crawl, but on Sunday 3rd April I was staying at Gladstone's Library in Hawarden and visited St Deiniol's Church there at 8am for their communion service.
It followed a Welsh variant of the prayer book and seemed to alternate somewhat between archaic and modern language. There was no mention of sheep....
It seemed a very friendly church and as it was Mothering Sunday (also known as Rose Sunday) the vicar talked about the Church as a family. I enjoyed it apart from the fact that it was very cold indeed! One of those old stone churches withn inadequate heating, but without wishing to be sentimental it was warm in plenty of other ways.
The vicar clearly knew the Warden of the Library pretty well and we briefly discussed films - he mentioned 'Keeping Mum' which was of course very apposite. A nice chap.
Three of us went on a church crawl on 8 May 2011. We took in three churches (and found another one but strangely there appeared to be no service there...).
We started with a Romanian Orthodox Church which was very different. Somehow it hadn't quite fully occurred to me that it would be in Romanian with no translation. With something like Latin one could pick up a few things but with Romanian unless you actually know the language you're a bit stuck.
The combination of the linguistic factor and the large number of icons gave it an exotic feel, superficially almost like Hinduism. There was a fair bit of people crossing themselves and sometimes I didn't know when or whether to do it. A very different experience. Also I was quite ignorant of the ethnology of people in that part of the world as they were a fair bit darker than I imagined. - much much more so than Hungarians even though it's a neighbouring country.
We left before the end (as is not unusual in an Orthodox context) and went up to Hampstead (or rather West Hampstead which is actually not the same thing at all) to St Luke's Hampstead, a medium sized evangelical Anglican church where there was quite a moving sermon. The preacher was talking about death and how only Christ has power over it (using a painting as a sermon aid), and added poignancy by mentioning that his brother had died on his honeymoon a couple of years ago. I'm not easily emotionally moved but I was touched by how brave he was in mentioning that.
We had a lovely and hearty lunch at The Spaniards Inn near Highgate - roast beef, lemon tart plus some of Anson's cheeseboard, washed down by some excellent Franziskaner wheat beer (incidentally Franziskaner's website actually asks you to confirm your date of birth to check you're over 18!) amply retarded our subsequent meanderings.
After finding out that despite all the notices there was no 4pm service at St Giles Cripplegate we stopped for some refreshments at Patisserie Valerie in Spitalfields, then went to the evening service at London City Presbyterian Church at St Botolph's Aldersgate. This is a congregation of the Free Church of Scotland (the building is also used for midweek talks connected with St Helen's Bishopsgate). The style of worship is not like anything I was used to - unaccompanied singing of psalms (using both the traditional Scottish psalter and a more recent version). The sermon was on Isaiah and was very comprehensive and helpful. Interestingly the church has strong Peruvian links (and numbers a few amongst its fairly small congregation) via missionary activity. It was a really good experience - they clearly take Scripture seriously but without being stereotypically dour Presbyterians.
Overall a really nice day and we rounded it off with some (admittedly not very nice) fish and chips at the Founders Arms on the South Bank - the views however are truly sublime!!
This is not strictly part of a church crawl, but on Sunday 3rd April I was staying at Gladstone's Library in Hawarden and visited St Deiniol's Church there at 8am for their communion service.
ReplyDeleteIt followed a Welsh variant of the prayer book and seemed to alternate somewhat between archaic and modern language. There was no mention of sheep....
It seemed a very friendly church and as it was Mothering Sunday (also known as Rose Sunday) the vicar talked about the Church as a family. I enjoyed it apart from the fact that it was very cold indeed! One of those old stone churches withn inadequate heating, but without wishing to be sentimental it was warm in plenty of other ways.
The vicar clearly knew the Warden of the Library pretty well and we briefly discussed films - he mentioned 'Keeping Mum' which was of course very apposite. A nice chap.
Three of us went on a church crawl on 8 May 2011. We took in three churches (and found another one but strangely there appeared to be no service there...).
ReplyDeleteWe started with a Romanian Orthodox Church which was very different. Somehow it hadn't quite fully occurred to me that it would be in Romanian with no translation. With something like Latin one could pick up a few things but with Romanian unless you actually know the language you're a bit stuck.
The combination of the linguistic factor and the large number of icons gave it an exotic feel, superficially almost like Hinduism. There was a fair bit of people crossing themselves and sometimes I didn't know when or whether to do it. A very different experience. Also I was quite ignorant of the ethnology of people in that part of the world as they were a fair bit darker than I imagined. - much much more so than Hungarians even though it's a neighbouring country.
We left before the end (as is not unusual in an Orthodox context) and went up to Hampstead (or rather West Hampstead which is actually not the same thing at all) to St Luke's Hampstead, a medium sized evangelical Anglican church where there was quite a moving sermon. The preacher was talking about death and how only Christ has power over it (using a painting as a sermon aid), and added poignancy by mentioning that his brother had died on his honeymoon a couple of years ago. I'm not easily emotionally moved but I was touched by how brave he was in mentioning that.
We had a lovely and hearty lunch at The Spaniards Inn near Highgate - roast beef, lemon tart plus some of Anson's cheeseboard, washed down by some excellent Franziskaner wheat beer (incidentally Franziskaner's website actually asks you to confirm your date of birth to check you're over 18!) amply retarded our subsequent meanderings.
After finding out that despite all the notices there was no 4pm service at St Giles Cripplegate we stopped for some refreshments at Patisserie Valerie in Spitalfields, then went to the evening service at London City Presbyterian Church at St Botolph's Aldersgate. This is a congregation of the Free Church of Scotland (the building is also used for midweek talks connected with St Helen's Bishopsgate). The style of worship is not like anything I was used to - unaccompanied singing of psalms (using both the traditional Scottish psalter and a more recent version). The sermon was on Isaiah and was very comprehensive and helpful. Interestingly the church has strong Peruvian links (and numbers a few amongst its fairly small congregation) via missionary activity. It was a really good experience - they clearly take Scripture seriously but without being stereotypically dour Presbyterians.
Overall a really nice day and we rounded it off with some (admittedly not very nice) fish and chips at the Founders Arms on the South Bank - the views however are truly sublime!!