Banbury

It was my privilege to preach yesterday in Banbury Evangelical Church. The church was formed some 24 years ago and meets in Banbury School, in a lecture theatre in the Sixth Form area (ideal in many ways for preaching and listening). Until recently their pastor was Robert Strivens but he is taking up this post as Principal of LTS. Having had some hand in that I felt obliged to preach.

I enjoyed the time among this group of around 50 (am) 30 (pm), fairly monocultural, fairly greying but earnest Christians in the Dr Lloyd-Jones tradition. I had a very nice afternoon with one of the elders and his wife, parents of four grown up children and learning Arabic in their spare time (!).

The service was very simple and straightforward (New Christian Hymns, ESV) - the way I like it. I preached from Matthew 11:28-30 and on Solomon's wisdom from 1 Kings 3. Several seemed to be taking notes. There are three elders and the church seemed fairly positive though there is a little frustration perhaps. For example a lady came in that morning who loved the sermon, etc, but is looking for something 'more lively' in the singing department and probably won't return. Our situation here is similar and I guess that if we 're not going to get a praise band the only answer is a pouring out of the Spirit.

En route I caught some of the Radio 4 morning service. There was a praise band and the music was well executed if you like that style (even the drummer was halfway decent - a rare thing in this context I find). It was obviously an Anglican church as they had absolution near the end. I wasn't sure if it was evangelical as the message was rather woolly. At the end they said it was from St Michael's, Aberystwyth and Stuart Bell was the preacher. That made sense. (I noticed that the producer was the late Hugh Morgan's daughter, Sian Baker).

For more on Banbury see here.