Collingswood, New Jersey
September 2, 2007
This week I tried another Methodist church. I had intended to branch out further afield, but I procrastinated and finally just chose a church very close to our apartment, one that wouldn’t necessitate looking up driving directions: First United Methodist Church of Collingswood. I knew where it was, and I knew that they have an 8:30 service, so I just drove over there a few minutes before the service began.
First United Methodist Church of Collingswood is an attractive stone structure in a quiet residential area, featuring a big square bell tower and large stained glass windows. I think I’m beginning to be able to date some of these churches at first sight. I’ll bet this one was built around the turn of the nineteenth century – it looks of that era. 1890 through 1930 seem to have been years when many large, impressive churches were constructed in this area, built of blocks of massive stone, usually with bell towers and gorgeous stained glass. And most of those big churches also have an addition attached, an education building added to the sanctuary in the 1950s or 1960s, around the time of the last big surge in church membership in America. First United Methodist of Collingswood looks as though it fits that pattern.
A hand-lettered sign outside the building tells me that the 8:30 service features contemporary worship. I notice that there is no parking lot – another good indicator that my guess about the church’s founding date is correct.
I’ve noticed the impact of the automobile on church design and church planting over the years. I first became aware of this when Neil and I moved to Mt. Pleasant, New Jersey when he accepted his first pastorate after graduating from Princeton Seminary. He pastured a little country church in the rolling hills of Hunterdon County, near the Delaware River. It was an idyllic location, probably the prettiest place we’ve ever lived. There was a lively group of other PCUSA pastors in the area, because every little town had its own Presbyterian church, even though they were only 5-10 miles apart. When I stopped to think about this, it seemed odd that there would be five little Presbyterian churches in such close proximity – wouldn’t it be more efficient to have one or two big ones?
The answer, of course, is that these were churches that had been founded in the 1700s, back when everyone walked or rode a buggy to church. You needed a church every few miles in those days, or lots of people wouldn’t be able to attend. And once a church is founded, and its members become fond of it, it’s very hard to disband, particularly in the name of something so cold and uninteresting as efficiency.
It was probably the same way with these no-parking-lot churches in the more urban areas of New Jersey. They were founded at a time when many people walked to church, and parking lots were unknown. The neighborhoods grew up around them, and before you know it they were urban churches in the twenty-first century with congregations that drove to church – but with no parking lots. This has become a serious problem for older churches.
At any rate, it’s pretty easy to find parking on the street. There doesn’t seem to be a big crowd here for the 8:30 service. I walk through the front doors.
The sanctuary is lovely. There is a central pulpit, and the choir stalls behind it could hold more than a hundred singers. A large round blue stained glass window glows above the choir stalls, and a wooden cross highlighted by a spotlight is fixed under the window. I’m estimating that this sanctuary could seat at least 500 people.
Hey, there’s a rear choir stall area as well; this church probably had quite a music program at some point in its history – maybe it still does.
Looking through the bulletin, I see that the Collingswood Methodists are a very busy group. In addition to the two Sunday services (and Sunday School in between), they have a Sunday evening prayer meeting and two or three sets of classes every Wednesday night. If I’m reading the schedule correctly, they have dinner together on Wednesdays as well. This is the schedule of old-fashioned holiness churches – two meetings on Sunday, one on Wednesday, and everyone is expected to attend all three.
A projection screen is lowered, covering the blue stained glass, and a man with an electric guitar addresses us. He asks everyone to move closer to the front, but nobody does. There are about 40 people in the sanctuary at this point, but more keep coming, and eventually there are about 70 attendees by 8:45. I’m sitting about midway in the pews, and I would move forward if anyone else did – but everyone else stays put, so I do too.
The service begins with music – the man with the electric guitar, and a woman who accompanies him on the piano. Congregational singing seems rather weak, which is probably a combination of the fact that our little group is too small for the space and the fact that we didn’t move to the front, so we’re all scattered apart from each other. Several people either don’t seem to know the tunes, or don’t want to sing. A few, though, raise their hands into the air while singing, and a few others clap while they sing.
The offering then occurs, and in total silence, which seems very odd. Two men in shorts and tee shirts pass around the plates while the rest of us just sit and look around.
More prayer, and then the sermon, which is based on Nehemiah 5:1-13. In the bulletin the preacher is identified as “Pastor Bill,” and on the back I see that his full name is Rev. Dr. William B. Wilson.
He preaches not from the pulpit, but from a little lectern placed on the floor in front of the pulpit. He walks around a lot while preaching, coming forward into the pews now and then. As he speaks, pictures are projected onto the screen that had been lowered earlier.
The sermon is titled “We just need to get along with each other” (yes, a reference to the Rodney King quote). Pastor Bill advocates friendship evangelism: “If all your friends are Christians, you need new friends.” This is something I agree with, although it’s certainly easier to say that than to do it. He reminds us that Christians are supposed to “reach out to the least, the last, and the lost.” (This might be one reason it’s hard for Christians to make non-Christian friends. Who wants to be friends with someone who considers you least, last, or lost?)
The sermon is about 25 minutes long, and at the end the pastor does something I think of as distinctively Methodist. He tells us that the altar is open for prayer, and people come forward to kneel at the altar. Pastor Bill kneels beside them and prays with them. One of the women kneeling at the altar is crying a little. Other people hug her when she returns to her seat. This seems like a very close-knit group.
The service closes with more praise music from the guitarist and pianist. It’s easier to follow along this time, especially because the final selection is Amazing Grace.
After the service I shake hands with a few people. I did manage to fill out the visitor information card, so perhaps there will be some follow-up.
Yes, there is good follow-up – a phone message thanking me for visiting and asking me to call back if I have any questions or concerns, and a letter from Pastor Bill saying the same thing.
When I checked the church’s website again before posting this, I noticed that there have been several changes since my visit. (By the way, whoever does their website sure does like bright colors.) For one thing, the church no longer has an 8:30 service.
For another thing, Pastor Bill has been succeeded by Rev. Sam Mountain (what a terrific name for a preacher!), who is a Nazarene.
That made me wonder what the relationship is between Nazarenes and Methodists. I have been in only one Nazarene church, a pretty little church in Carbondale, Illinois. All I remember about that group is that they wore no jewelry, not even wedding rings or decorative hairpins, and the women did not cut their hair, but wore it either in buns or hanging long down their backs. (Which made it all the odder when their pastor went to the beauty salon to get a permanent, which he said was because his hair was so unmanageable, but which everyone suspected was for the purpose of hiding a bald spot.)
So my knowledge of Nazarenes is extremely weak, and even though I didn’t visit a Nazarene church during my year of visiting churches, I decided to see what I could learn about them in conjunction with this visit to Collingswood Methodist.
I turned to Wikipedia first, where I learned that the Nazarenes came out of the Methodist tradition of the 19th-century holiness movement. Most of the Nazarenes in the world live in the US (about 600,000), Haiti (100,000), or India (60,000). The headquarters of the denomination are in Kansas, and this little group supports more than 58 undergraduate and graduate institutions in more than 40 countries! The Church of the Nazarene is a member of the World Methodist Council, so it makes sense that a Nazarene pastor could be called to a Methodist Church.
The history of the denomination goes back to the early years of the 19th century, when various holiness churches united, in a series of rather complicated mergers, splits, and realignments. In these early years the denominations that resulted often had the word Pentecostal in their names, but they didn’t speak in tongues. After the more famous tongues-speaking Pentecostal churches began to spring up, the Nazarene groups that used that terminology voted to remove it from their official name, because it confused people.
The denominational name was suggested by Dr. Joseph Pomeroy Widney, who said that the word Nazarene in reference to Jesus and his followers symbolized “the toiling, lowly mission of Christ. It was the name that Christ used of Himself, the name which was used in derision of Him by His enemies, the name which above all others linked Him to the great toiling, struggling, sorrowing heart of the world. It is Jesus, Jesus of Nazareth to whom the world in its misery and despair turns, that it may have hope.” This understanding of the terminology fit in with the denomination’s goal of ministering to the poor and homeless.
This Wiki article is giving me a better idea of what the whole holiness movement is about. I had associated it with a lot of old-fashioned rules: don’t drink, don’t dance, don’t wear jewelry, don’t cut your hair, etc. Like lots of people, I initially thought of these rules as arbitrary, priggish, and mean-spirited. But as I think about it more, I see the relationship between not wearing jewelry and identifying with the poor – that’s more interesting. The prohibition on alcohol, too, is related to concern for the poor, because alcohol is one of the curses of the poor (although it certainly bedevils the rich, too). The more I read, the more holiness churches began to seem to me like a Protestant effort to create communities of people who dedicate their lives to a difficult but rewarding path of godly living and service to the poor – versions of Catholic orders, but for people who live in the everyday world. The Nazarenes have lots and lots of ministries to poor people in lots and lots of countries. Coincidentally, the same week I was learning about the Nazarenes and holiness churches, Chris Armstrong posted a very interesting article on the holiness movement, pointing out comparisons with the "new monasticism" people are talking about today.
I was also interested to see that the Nazarenes have traditionally had what fundamentalists would consider a very liberal stance on evolution, from the beginning of the founding of the denomination. In fact, at their most recent General Assembly (July 2009), they defeated an attempt to endorse a literalist reading of Genesis.
Famous Nazarenes include James Dobson, the Focus on the Family guy (although he does not advertise his affiliation). Famous people who used to be Nazarene and have left the denomination include Gospel singer and songwriter Bill Gaither, actor Tom Hanks, infamous preacher and prophet Jim Jones, and rock singer John Mellencamp.
Hmmm. I didn’t expect to learn all this about the Nazarenes from my visit to the Methodist Church, but I’m glad I did. For one thing, it helped me get over mistakenly thinking that the holiness tradition is a holier-than-thou tradition, which it is not. It would be well for me to keep in mind the Wesleyan-Methodist Holiness tradition of reaching out to “the least, the last, and the lost.”
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