Green Lane Meths

Green Lane Methodist Church in London’s Stoke Newington is a new-looking building, and fully integrated into the surrounding housing. It sits at the bottom of a modest tower block, with a number of domestic dwellings occupying the floors above. Space in urban centres is at a premium, and this multi-useage of that one plot of land will have made the rents and costs of purchase cheaper for all concerned. Although some residents might have preferred a Tesco or a sauna, the Meths of Stoke Newington have neighbours above and around.

I recently explained to an old friend that we were hoping to re-open a closed chapel within a village. He dismissed the plan, suggesting we should rather have acquired an old warehouse on an industrial estate with ample parking. This is the way ahead, this is where modern church should be. Yet there is something rather good about being within a community. This does not mean renaming ourselves a ‘community church’, which is little more than a soundbite, but it does mean we can be among people, not some distant temple or cathedral set amidst the well populated townhouses of the sophisticated and urbane, or the grey prefabs of an out of town trading estate. I think that the Methodists of Green Lane understood this well enough.