Holy Trinity Church, Micklegate, York

York’s Holy Trinity Church on Micklegate is an interesting old place, worth a detour to smooch about its precincts and inspect its features. When I called, a church member was present sweeping about the various furnishings with a feather duster, evidently enjoying the opportunity to meet new people and share her extensive knowledge. Although old and stately, it probably is not York’s finest place of worship, and fails to make the ranks of Simon Jenkins’ England’s Thousand Best Churches. Few of them do, and this does not in any way detract from its grandeur and antiquity.

Curiously, it once had a more exalted status at the time of the great Domesday Book of 1086. It was reckoned one of the five great northern churches which were exempted from taxes to the king or fees to the local earl. The other lucky members of this privileged group were Durham Cathedral, Ripon Cathedral, and York and Beverley Minsters. Although the compilers described it as 'a ruined and poverty-stricken church', for which heavy taxation could not, for once, be blamed, it was famous and prestigious.

Many of the people on my teacher training course became headteachers or even mandarins at the Department of Education ('Those who can, do; those who can't, teach; those who can't teach, work for the DfE') while I reached mere middle management. Likewise, a good many of the pupils I once taught are now leading in their fields: surgeons, company directors, civil servants. I, a mere minister of the gospel, command even less respect than I did even as a school teacher. Even within the church world, one or two have wondered if I should still be at my ‘first church’, as though it should only be a stepping stone to a larger, more prominent congregation. Judging by the short tenures of many of our ministers, Salem Chapel was but a stepping stone to greater, bigger charges; a place where the ropes might be found and teeth may be cut.  

There is nothing wrong with small, or old, or decaying or demoted, if God is in it and Christ is honoured. I have never experienced the ministry at Holy Trinity, Micklegate, but if it preaches the old gospel of sins’ forgiveness and resurrection hope, then it would be a greater establishment by heaven’s accounting than those four bigger, greater churches combined.

For who has despised the day of small things? Zechariah 4:10a