Praying for Burnley

Last year, people from Martin Top Chapel and some others prayed about, and then began, a new church in the Yorkshire Dales. There is a real need for gospel witness in those beautiful valleys for we were drawing (and continue to draw), people from that area, which is about twenty miles’ distance. With time, the chapel at Hetton will become an independent church, and Salem Chapel will consequently become smaller. Although Hetton now attracts about 30 on a Sunday afternoon, some of these are well-wishers from Martin Top, and it will be some time before it comes of age.

From the south, we currently attract between 15-18 people from the Burnley area, including Padiham. Like Wharfedale, there are existing churches already present, but for various reasons, many Christian folk travel over the hills to Salem Chapel and other locations for their worship and Bible teaching. Although having our chapel full on a Sunday morning proved to be a gratifying and unusual experience to us a couple of years ago, it may be time to consider planting again, in Burnley. Such a discussion was had at our Church Meeting last week. 14% of the town’s population is Muslim, though the non-religious and atheistic make up a larger and ever-growing presence. The Office for National Statistics reports:

In 2021, 31.5% of Burnley residents reported having "No religion", up from 19.7% in 2011. The rise of 11.8 percentage points was the largest increase of all broad religious groups in Burnley.

Considering Lancashire is one of the most Christian counties in England (according to census returns which may not be deemed reliable or useful for a variety of reasons), the position of Burnley is not dissimilar in my mind to that of Ninevah in the book of Jonah:

“And should I not pity Nineveh, that great city, in which are more than one hundred and twenty thousand persons who cannot discern between their right hand and their left—and much livestock?” (4:11)

Burnley is a little smaller at 95,000, but levels of spiritual ignorance may be little better.

For years in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, our little chapel on Newby Hill could not support itself, and required regular financial subsidies and visiting preachers from the Yorkshire and Lancashire Congregational Unions to keep it afloat. The time is now coming to return the favours and settle the debts. Now it is we who are sending money and people to Yorkshire to reawaken Christian witness in its valleys and hills. We also now hope to turn our modest gaze to the larger, urban areas to the south, the industrial towns through which flow the Brun and Calder. A little chapel in the middle of nowhere hoping to start a second church in a larger town, while still a toddler plays upon its knee! We are, in many ways, too weak and inadequate, yet God in His grace will provide the muscle, the money and the wisdom to realise such a venture. The days are dark and the land increasingly pagan and idolatrous, but He who promised that the gates of hell would not prevail against His earthly witnesses will also ensure that their paths are made straight as they seek to bring again the gospel of light to benighted streets and gloomy housing estates.

Pray, therefore. Pray for Hetton Chapel. Pray for Burnley. And pray for Salem Chapel. It is one of the few churches in the country whose pastor, under God’s guidance, is deliberately trying to make smaller. 

Then He said to them, “The harvest truly is great, but the labourers are few; therefore pray the Lord of the harvest to send out labourers into His harvest”. Luke 10:2, NKJV