Bible Pattern

I spoke at the Blackpool Bible Pattern Church last month. It is not a denomination with which I was familiar; a former pastor of mine asked that I went to support them. Never very comfortable leaving my own congregation, I trust that I rightly divided and proclaimed God’s word among them ahead of my train journey back to our own evening service. A rather detailed online source states that

The Bible-Pattern Church Fellowship was founded in 1939 by Principal George Jeffreys (1889–1962), a Welsh minister who, together with his brother Stephen Jeffreys, in 1915 had founded the Elim Foursquare Gospel Alliance, one of the first Pentecostal organisations in Britain.

Differences of opinion regarding church governance eventually led Pastor Jeffreys to withdraw from what later came to be called the Elim Pentecostal Church and form the first Bible-Pattern Church Fellowship in Nottingham in 1939. A number of other local churches were subsequently founded in various parts of the United Kingdom.

Bible-Pattern churches were also Pentecostal in terms of their doctrine and style of worship, believing (in common with other evangelical churches), in repentance from sin and salvation through a personal relationship with Jesus Christ as described in the Bible, the baptism in the Holy Spirit, and maintaining that God had given spiritual gifts to the church which members should seek to experience, such as speaking in tongues, prophecy and divine healing.

I suspect that, in their earlier days at least, they were influenced by Jeffries' 'British Israelism', though I saw no evidence of it at Blackpool. This is the peculiar belief that the British peoples were the lost tribes of ancient Israel, anf that the British monarchs were the heirs of David.

The church's style of service was standard evangelical fare, and they seemed to appreciate the preaching. The fellowship bought a former Methodist chapel back in the 1990s and updated it, but in a sympathetic manner. I like how they kept the old pulpit and organ, even though neither seems to be frequently employed.

I pray that, whatever our designs and patterns, our hobbies and preoccupations, we conform them to God’s word, the Bible, above all else.