Alison and I were thinking about the number of St John’s members, still worshipping with us today who can remember our arrival back in November 1990, thirty-two years ago. We have come up with just eight.
Very unfortunately, a CPAS speaker had been booked months in advance for the very same Sunday on which I was due to preach my first sermon. So, after the vacancy was finally over, the congregation still had to wait for a week longer to find out what the new vicar was actually like.
It would be very difficult to stay in any church as long as Alison and I have done had the congregation remained stable over the years. Fortunately, there is a lot of coming and going here. St John’s 2010 congregation is very different from the congregation of 2020.
Back then, things looked different. We had no parish office. That was just grass. We had no Upper Room, no Quiet Room, no carpets or curtains in the worship area, no dais, and no soft chairs. The Lounge, Kitchen and Balcony had not been developed. The front door was in a different place and there was no Haydon Centre.
Our only musical instrument was the piano, and occasionally a guitar. When we got back from holiday in August 1991, we discovered that our sole pianist had decided to move to the North East to run a fish and chip shop. Suddenly we were in lots of trouble! But as can happen, when one person steps down, others step up.
That Great Chip Shop Disaster turned out to be the beginning of our music group which has now been leading our worship for over three decades. Only two members—Alison and David —were part of the group back then.
We were, at that time, not an independent parish but part of the Rodbourne Cheney Team Ministry as well as being in a Local Ecumenical Project with Emanuel URC in Haydon Wick. It felt like we were running a three-legged race and were tripping each other up. It was Bishop Barry Rogerson who suggested that St John’s should become a parish in our own right. That was definitely the right decision and it released us to develop the church into the worshipping community of today.