16 June 2025

Yesterday, I had a Sunday off from preaching. We decided to worship in a small church belonging to a different denomination. There must have been about forty worshippers – predominantly older people but there were some babes in arms and a few young children with their parents.

The minister preached about the Holy Trinity and, in particular, the 1700th anniversary of the First General Council of the Church at Nicaea making frequent reference to Arianism and the divine nature of Jesus. He talked about contemporary problems working against religious faith.

He highlighted three – individualism, cynicism and societal fragmentation. None of these is conducive to building up a harmonious community. Focusing on ourselves, being cynical about the effectiveness of institutions and the fragmentation of communities into protest, identity and political groups work against unity.

Three things within the worshipping community stood out. Firstly, there was a very powerful singer in the back row of the church who belted out the hymns in such a way that he drowned out everyone else, filled the church with his song and distracted me from praising God.

Secondly, when the offering was taken, the person with the basket passed our row  without stopping to offer us his basket. Instead, he made a bee-line for people he knew on the row behind. We were left holding our offering without anyone keen enough  to receive our gift for the altar.

Thirdly, when we stood to recite the Nicene Creed, I noticed that the church had opted to use the form of the Creed which begins, ‘I believe in one God, the Father, the Almighty’ rather than, ‘We believe …’ which celebrates our solidarity with each other and  is the version in our Common Order and Church Hymnary Fourth Edition!

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