My day at St. Anne with St. Augustine, Bermondsey

I may have mentioned a few months ago that I was asked by the Canon Missioner of the diocese to participate in a program called “Companions in Mission”, a group of clergy and lay people who would assist in parishes that need some help in mission and evangelisation. Our team of four was commissioned today at the parish referred to in the title. The Archdeacon came to commission us, and after the usual bun-fight after the service we went over to the vicarage for lunch and a discussion.

The church itself is in Thorburn Square in Bermondsey, which is one of the oldest settled parts of South London. It begins on the east side of London Bridge, and goes over to the border with Lewisham borough. South it goes to just above our parish boundaries, along the New Kent Road. To Brits Bermondsey is where the original British “mafia” gangs hang out: the Kray twins, various others; it’s the area of dodgy deals in car boot sales, things falling out of the backs of trucks and sold at a fraction of their original prices, and the like. For those who know of British TV’s “Only Fools and Horses” (although they’d pronounce it “H’only Fools and ‘Orses”) Bermondsey is where it’s set.

St. Anne with St. Augustine sits in its little square like the central tower within a castle keep. There is no road around it, only a walkway with planters where there was once a road. It is entirely walled in by blocks of flats on all four sides, with only an arched doorway in the middle of each block. HWMBO and I made a reconnaissance yesterday afternoon and it was difficult to find.

I knew the parish was evangelical, and that this would be a “family service”, whatever that was. I was not disappointed. When I entered the church (early as it turned out), they were getting the overhead projector ready to show the hymn words (so people would not have to juggle papers). The associate vicar is a relatively young woman priest, the wife of one of the rectors in my deanery. The Vicar is also the Vicar of St. James Bermondsey, a Waterloo church just off Jamaica Road near the shore of the Thames. When one of the gangsters meets his untimely end, St. James is where their funerals are held. Carloads of floral tributes reading “We wish it hadn’t come to this” led by the glass-sided horse-drawn hearse are at each funeral, along with men in long black coats talking into their lapels.

The service itself was very simple, lots of singing, a reading (not the reading for the week in the Lectionary, but the parable of the Lost Sheep), a “talk” by the Vicar, and then the blessing. I wasn’t aware that an Archdeacon wears a cassock with red piping along with a cincture also bordered with red piping. Very snazzy.

The people are nice: a varied bunch, racially very diverse and very welcoming. After church we went to the Vicarage for lunch and a chat. We’ll each be doing one Sunday there for the next month and then figure out what we can help them with. I drew next Sunday, so I’ll be away from St. Matthew’s for two weeks in a row. It will be a tip.

The thing that struck me is that both the Vicar, his wife (who seems to be quite as active as he is), and the Associate Vicar said that St. Anne’s problem is that, being buried in the square, no one knows it’s there. So that’s the difficulty we can help them with. They need to get the word out all over the parish. I think we’ll brainstorm that in a few weeks.

Hopefully this assignment (which goes for a year) will be fruitful for the parish and for me.

On the way home I waited for a number 1 bus along with a large group of people including some pre-teenage tearaways. A 381 bus came by, and apparently the bus driver knew these teenagers, as he didn’t let them in. They then ran alongside the bus and pulled the emergency releases and jumped on the bus as it was travelling along Southwark Park Road. I expect that if this keeps us there’ll be another set of funerals at St. James or St. Anne’s, not of fully-fledged gangsters, but teenage wannabe gangsters who slipped under the 381 bus.

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