About ten years ago I discovered I had a Jewish heritage. Armed with that knowledge I had lunch with a Rabbi of my acquaintance who suggested I ‘look at’ several synagogues to get a better understanding of what they were about. As it happened I didn’t get further than my first – West London Reformed Synagogue at Marble Arch. The building was much the same as a rather large church and the first Rabbi was known as ‘The Revd’, a sure sign that at foundation, the place was modelled on the Christian church, such was the animosity in the 19th century towards Judaism.
I hadn’t been there for many months when the chief lay person asked me if I’d like to become a rabbi, much to the horror of the rabbis in residence. But there were a lot of similarities between synagogues and churches, I mused. They had a large building which required good maintenance and a decent amount of money to keep it going; they had property stewards and families that gave regularly. In most practical ways, there was much in common. It is true that members gave a fixed fee to belong rather than our open offertory, but I fitted in so well because everything was familiar, certainly on a practical level.
They had a large congregation on the social level. Groups met to create their own bubble and the whole community gathered around a meal after the service and a lot of food at other times. The social life bonded the community and gave common identity to the many families which were spread throughout London and beyond. The ordering of their social life was dependent on people being able to travel, some at some distance. Perhaps this is how Christians will order their churches in future – fewer but, for those that still exist, more populated. Fewer but larger!
I soon made friends with another ‘gentile’, Tom. He was there because his fiancé was Jewish and he wanted to support her. We attended worship together and we both noticed some things that interested us – a great deal of the worship was in Hebrew and at the speed they went unintelligible to us both. Yet, we remarked how moving it was to hear the chant and I reflected that it was probably like Latin in churches and in earlier times. But it was some of the sermons that foxed us both. They were always a very interesting reading of the scriptures and strictly intelligent and understandable. And yet, there was something missing. Both Tom and I agreed eventually it was the lack of what we, in Christian circles call systematic Christian theology, behind the sermon making it more a bon mot than something to dwell on and to support our choices in life. I think we knew why I found this unusual (having preached for so long) but for Tom, who had no faith and no religious belief, we thought how unusual it was that he spotted it too.
Comparing this experience and thinking about the church, and perhaps Redhill in particular, I see the connection with the practical side of a religious commitment – looking and maintaining the building and running rotas to make sure worship runs smoothly – as I do with the social element. Is there though something to be said about theology? How might the church be different?
In Clark M Williamson’s book, Way of Blessing, Way of Life: a Christian Theology, he says “…the vocation of the church is to make the Christian witness…through everything that happens in its life – through preaching, worship, teaching, relationships among members, congregational spending, and actions beyond the congregation.” If we might say that is the church’s calling, how do we make it a reality?
