Bridge Street Pentecostal Church

I was once a part of the Bridge Street Pentecostal Church in Leeds. It was a large fellowship of about 500 and it held three services each Sunday as well as a proper Bible Study midweek. It was a survivor of the classical Pentecostalism I have learned to admire. Its origins are in Edwardian times, with some of its early members coming from Leeds’ Salem Congregational Church. It still sang hymns, the role and status of scripture was paramount and it had a real burden for the lost. Each Sunday evening was a ‘gospel meeting’; midweek, its members pounded the streets knocking on doors.

There was a significant Afro-Caribbean community, whose female members dressed in garish colours and smart hats, and whose men wore dark suits and godly expressions. The first Sunday I attended, in January 1998, we sang Would You be Free from your Burden of Sin, aka There’s Power in the Blood. That swung it for me. It might be a fortyfive-minute walk, but a church that sang hymns like that was the one to which I would commit.

While I was still there, the church started to change, and not necessarily for the worse. The hymns faded out, and gospel preaching on the Sunday evening was replaced by special evenings of drama and performance. At one point, there was an outbeak of ‘gold dust’ (do you remember that one?) at which point I was glad that my university course was coming to an end and I would be moving on. It was led by good men, some of whom are still there. Pastor Andy Lancaster I still love dearly in the Lord, along with his wife and family, and Pastor Lionel Currie, whose expository preaching proved beneficial.

I called at the church last month. A small paper sign at the rear advised that the church had relocated and was now called Bridge Community Church (a smart transition- a new name, without severing the old brand, and throwing in a hint of theology for good measure) though one might not have known this from the front. The new fellowship is not quite as central as the former, but it has a smart new building and swanky website (http://www.bccleeds.org/). It even has its own Jobs section, which goes on to explain:

Having recently relocated to our new site with a 1000 seat worship auditorium, youth and children’s centres, large meeting rooms, and café spread over a large campus we are looking to appoint an operations manager to plan, direct/coordinate the administrative and business (non ministerial) operations of the Church.

It may no longer be the throwback to Pentecostalism’s golden days, but it’s certainly prospering as it seeks to be a fresh expression of Christ’s Body, with its ‘campus’, ‘auditorium’ and ‘operations manager’. I really enjoyed my time at Bridge Street. It was a welcoming church, though I am still amused by someone asking me if it was my first time, in my third year at the church. Current members may remember me as the skinny student who operated the OHP 1999-2001.

I wish God’s blessing upon it.