25 new churches to visit in London

St Saviour, Eltham

I’ve been putting all the down-time during the lockdown while waiting for files to upload or transfer over the internet to good use! I have spent much of it looking through the two excellent volumes by Michael Yelton &; John Salmon ‘Anglican Church-Building in London’. Volume 1 covers the period 1915-1945 and the follow-up covers the period 1946-2012.

There are hundreds of churches listed with accompanying black and white photographs. All of them would make for excellent visits but for the purposes of this list I have tried to limit myself to my favourite twenty five – excluding those churches I know well (like St Paul’s Bow Common or John Keble, Mill Hill). The twenty five ‘new’ churches in the list are therefore both new in age (relatively speaking) and new to me. Once the lockdown is over it will be good to visit these fascinating buildings. Like the books, this list is organised alphabetically by borough and I have used images from a variety of sources and information from the excellent London Church Buildings website to find out more.

BOOK REVIEW : Phoenix at Coventry. The Building of a Cathedral by Basil Spence

One of the great joys of Bloomsbury is the number of second-hand bookshops to explore. It was wonderful to discover this book recently. Written four months before the consecration of Coventry Cathedral on 25th May 1962, Basil Spence guides us through his eleven years of “toil, frustration, hope and ecstasy” as the cathedral was designed and built. My own office has not (yet) had the opportunity to work on such a prestigious commission but what is striking from Spence’s account of the design and development process is that we often share many of the same challenges, frustrations and joys – albeit on a much more modest scale.

BOOK REVIEW : Augustine of Canterbury, Leadership, Mission and Legacy by Robin Mackintosh

Leading worship is always a great privilege whatever the time or day, but I was especially pleased to be asked to lead Night Prayer on the Patronal festival of my college. Whilst there is (usually) no sermon given during this service, I thought I should find out a bit about St Augustine of Canterbury, to do justice to the occasion.

Night Prayer - St Augustine of Canterbury

It was a great privilege to lead Night Prayer (Compline) today on the St Augustine's College of Theology Facebook Page as we celebrate our patron saint, St Augustine of Canterbury. Please follow along by watching the video below.

Start:Stop – Revisiting the legacy of Augustine of Canterbury

Hello and welcome to our Start:Stop reflection from St Stephen Walbrook, my name is Phillip Dawson.

This week we remember a man who set out from a deserted city on a dangerous journey north. No, not Dominic Cummings and his much dissected trip to Durham – but St Augustine, the first Archbishop of Canterbury, who, with his mobile monastery of forty lay and ordained men, journeyed one thousand miles by sea, river and land from Rome and, on their second attempt, arrived in Canterbury, where they built a cathedral, a school and hospital and baptised thousands of new Christians; sowing the seeds of faith that would grow to become the Church of England.

BOOK REVIEW : Rehearsing Scripture by Anna Carter Florence

In this book, Anna Carter Florence, (Professor of Preaching at Columbia Theological Seminary), encourages us to use techniques from the world of theatre to help us “find the script in scripture.” Intended as a tool for group-work, the techniques can also be used individually. The purpose is to help us “encounter” scripture rather than just read it - “The Word needs a body” - and to use this experience of encounter to “say something true” to others.

Personal Journal - Preparing and Producing an Act of Worship

I was asked to lead Morning Prayer today on the St Augustine's College Facebook page, when the church remembers Alcuin of York - a recording can be seen at the link below. Alcuin was one of the towering figures in the intellectual world of the eighth century, who changed education for the better and for good. Many of his writings survive to this day including an epitaph he wrote for himself "Alcuin was my name: learning I loved." The last time I led Morning Prayer I wrote a journal setting out the decisions I had made and what I might do differently next time. I tried to put some of that into practice today!

Start:Stop - Decisions, decisions!

Georges Rouault, Christ and the Apostles, 1937-8

Hello and welcome to this week’s Start:Stop reflection from St Stephen Walbrook, my name is Phillip Dawson.

Decisions, decisions! Before the lockdown, one newspaper reported that we each make up to 35,000 decisions every day. Sounds a bit far-fetched to me – but whatever the figure, I imagine it’s considerably lower at the moment. It may be no exaggeration to say that at the present time, life and death decisions are being made by those with responsibility for our health and wellbeing. Decisions which, for the most part, are outside of our control. Decisions which are certainly having an impact on people living in the poorest countries in the world; supporting whom is the focus of this year’s Christian Aid Week appeal, which continues until Saturday.

On Thursday, the church celebrates the life of St Matthias. Virtually all we know about him is from a few short passages in Acts of the Apostles, which I’m about to read. This tells us that he’d been a loyal follower of Jesus right from the start, as had another man, Justus. Faced with the task of selecting a replacement after the death of Judas, the eleven remaining apostles found they could not decide between Matthias and Justus, so they prayed to the Lord, before casting lots. The rest, as they say, is history - or perhaps 'unknown' history in the case of Matthias.

Personal Journal - Preparing, Producing and Participating in an Act of Worship

Mosaic based on the Deesis Mosaic, Hagia Sophia

This journal records my thoughts on the experience of preparing, producing and participating in a service of Morning Prayer on Thursday 30th April 2020. The service was broadcast on the Facebook page of St Augustine's College of Theology and can be watched online here. The order of service is here. The paragraph numbers were added later to assist referencing to a coursework assignment.

Facebook Art - Lord you have called me by name

Mosaic based on a batik 'Jesus on the Lotus Flower' by Dr P Solomon Raj, 1998 

Today I led a virtual service of Morning Prayer on our College Facebook page. You can watch the recording here and follow the order of service here. I am grateful to Ben Schoeman for the music in today’s service and to my partner Henry for reading and for acting as cameraman. Today the Church of England remembers Mary Ramabai, a Sanskrit scholar and translator of the scriptures and the first woman to be awarded the title ‘Pandita’ which means scholar or learned person. She is remembered for her opposition to child marriage and the caste system, for setting up schools and homes for women and orphans and for pioneering an Indian vision of the faith.

Start:Stop - Why Work?

Office in a Small City - Edward Hopper, 1953

Hello and welcome to this week’s Start:Stop reflection from St Stephen Walbrook, my name is Phillip Dawson. Under normal circumstances we would be repeating this short reflection in church every quarter of an hour; commuters on their way to work would drop in as they pass by, starting their day by stopping to reflect for a few minutes. For many, the journey to work at the moment is a somewhat shorter affair - and finding an appropriate environment in which to work may be more of a challenge than it was a few months ago! For those who have been furloughed during the coronavirus pandemic, there is an expectation that they won’t do much, if any work – at least not paid work for their employers.

In our reflection this morning we will be exploring our relationship with work. We begin with a short passage from scripture, to which the editors of the bible we use in church have chosen to add the rather ominous title “Warning Against Idleness.”

You can listen to a copy of this reflection here.