Future Historic

The Friends of Pendle Heritage Centre came to visit the chapel on Tuesday. To their credit, they booked thirteen months ahead and went walking about the area before returning to Martin Top for tea and cake and a nice talk by me. I dug out some interesting items from the archive which they could inspect at their leisure, such as the Sunday School registers from the 1890s and the accounts from the 1870s. There are thousands of churches and ecclesiastic buildings which are older and more interesting than ours, but we are an increasingly rare jewel. Of course, the lovely views and local footpaths add to our allure, and the offer of tea and cake is always most welcome after a hike. Our uncommonness is found in something more than that, however: we are still trading. Furthermore, we have been faithful to our founders’ principles in both polity (how we are structured) and theology (what we teach and preach). As dozens of churches in the United Kingdom close each month (3,500 in the past decade), and many of those that remain teach a sickly soup of prosperity, wokeness, or spiritual indifference, gatherings of real Christians will become ever more exotic. We may be a church with a longish past, but we also have a future. Despite the increasing number of minarets, angry blue-haired secularists and a general, spiritual malaise among the rest, Salem Chapel shall long survive me and its current membership, and shall be here proclaiming God’s good gospel until the very day that the Lord Jesus returns.

Today, we mark our 209th anniversary: even so, come Lord Jesus.