Amazing Brickwork: Revival at Banks

I have no doubt that some people find my blogs boring. To be fair, they probably don’t click back. If they did, however, they would suggest I have plumbed new depths of tedium based upon the photographs above and below. Isn’t this brickwork marvellous? When I saw it at the weekend, I became really rather giddy. Can you see how the bricks change? The courser, lighter bricks on the right give way to ones of a deeper red. They in their turn are enjoined to a standard Accrington brick with its uniform colour and smoother exterior. 

In truth, I’m not excited about bricks in general, but I was not deceiving you when I intimated my wonderment. These brick walls belong to Banks Methodist Church, near Tarleton, where I preached last Sunday. The organist, after the service, explained how the chapel had been erected in the 1870s as a small meeting place for Methodists. After some time, it grew, and they extended their building. Around 1900, evangelists from nearby Preston spent a few weeks in the village, and so many people were saved and converted that the church was expanded a third time allowing it to hold 650 people. I was excited because, like the rings on a tree’s trunk, or notches on a doorpost upon which a doting parent has recorded their child's growth, this changing brickwork evidences revival and Kingdom growth. Would that our churches would expand rather than shrivel. Let’s go and buy more bricks. 

Will You not revive us again, that Your people may rejoice in You?

Psalm 85:6