Abbots Langley Methodist Church
Magazine
October 2007

Fresh Expressions of Church

from Alan Bannister

This is the third in the series about worshipping in other churches, other countries, other ways, from Alan and Margaret Bannister

Having traveled to Australia by way of Singapore to meet our new Granddaughter, we had gone to the North Island to meet her other Grandparents, who are New Zealanders. We were aiming to worship in a local church each Sunday of our trip, and we were now in Queenstown, in the South Island .

St. Peter's Church, Queenstown, NZ

St. Peter's Church was built in 1932 in the style of a scaled down Norman Parish Church . Located close to the lake, it was originally surrounded by open ground. This part of Queenstown is now one of the most sought after areas in town and the land is worth a fortune. The church has taken advantage of this and is doing joint development of community centre, social housing, and development of residential dwellings. Shame about the open space, but Queenstown is a magnet to people who do not lead a settled life and the church has an important role to play in that.

We had some great music. As we came in we heard a man singing at the piano (not easy to talk over that!). He was a great improviser, and as with the soloist we had heard in Wellington Cathedral, we found he too was blind, I'm probably betraying all sorts of non-PC prejudices, but I just wondered how he kept track of the verses unless he learned each last verse off by heart. Maybe that's the easy bit!

Our tickets took us home via South Africa . Although NZ, Australia (and the UK of course) have their mix of well-to-do and run down areas, it is nothing compared to the contrasts of the middle class residential areas and the shanty towns we saw around the Cape; great wealth and poverty side by side. Our Sunday service was in the middle of Cape Town at the Central Methodist Church – just a few paces from our hotel.

We had been into the church during the week and seen the way they supported the homeless and hungry ('give sandwiches not money' was their advice to everyone).

The Sunday Service was special as it was the 19th anniversary of the merging of two 'white' and 'black' Methodist churches. At the time this brought them into direct conflict with the authorities, created hate mail and even death threats. A plaque under a wooden cross in the foyer reads

"For he himself is our peace, who has made the two one and has destroyed the barrier, the dividing wall of hostility. Eph 2:24

This cross was formed from wood taken from the pews of the Metropolitan and Buitekant Street churches to mark the amalgamation of the two congregations into the Central Methodist Mission on January 31 st 1988. This amalgamation signified the end of more than 150 years of racial separation in the Methodist Church in Cape Town and restored the church to the unity it had enjoyed during the first 30 years of its existence."

Candle, Central Methodist Church, Cape Town, SA

The bravery and commitment of a church founded under such circumstances has to be a example to us all. I wonder how we would react if faced with such a situation.

The sermon was shared between the Minister, his two teenage daughters, and a member who was just starting out as a local preacher. The Amnesty International candle was central to the girl's talk as it referred back to the history of their church.

Wherever in the world we join in Christian Worship, we are struck not by the differences, but by the similarities that bring us together. It really doesn't matter a jot if you kneel, sit, or stand – it's the prayer you say that matters.