I was walking past the Comfort Inn, an unremarkable hotel on Christchurch Road, when I saw a banner attached to the railings: "Potter House Christian Fellowship". The banner told me that they meet in the hotel at 11:00 am and 6:30 pm on Sundays and 730pm on Wednesdays. After 150 years we have a second place of worship in Christchurch Road. The fine Victorian structure of Christchurch itself is 50 yards away on the other side of the road.Can market differentiation go much further in Christian worship? In Reading we already have Catholic, Methodist, Baptist, Quakers, United Reform, plus multiple flavours of Anglicanism. These are the most subtle and confusing. Christchurch itself is mainstream Anglican (judge by the reference to "Sunday Eucharist" on the noticeboard outside. St Giles, ten minutes walk away is more Papal than the Pope. There was talk of St Giles defecting en masse (if you'll pardon the expression) to Rome after the uproar over the ordination of women in the 1990s. St Marys, five minutes from St Giles, would have a fit at the suggestion of anything Romish and is sternly devoted to the Book of Common Prayer. Greyfriars, less than 5 minutes walk beyond St Marys, is the exemplar of happy-clappy evangelicalism.
Yet all these long established congregations, in solid purpose built (and often historic and beautiful) premises, do not satisfy all the spiritual requirements of the local population. there is constant multiplication of small "churches" that do not fit any established pattern, beyond an apparent devotion to the Bible. In an earlier post I mentioned the fellowship which has established itself in a large house on Wokingham Road, plus the mysterious "Brethren" who have large modern premises on Redlands Road and are moving to much bigger accommodation ten minutes drive away. A longer established "Mount Zion" church is tucked away in a little road off the Wokingham Road.
All these involved serious money to build and maintain. Something like "Potter House" involves only paying rent for a hotel lounge as and when required. The pastor needs only a cheap family computer for email and printing off newsletters and service sheets (if it is a style of worship which requires written guidance). The congregation would bring their own Bibles, if needed. If the pastor has a full time job and officiates only on Sunday and Wednesday, costs are minimal. Given the meeting times, the hotel might well provide the lounge for free as long as the congregation paid for a buffet lunch/supper. It is another regular income stream which hotels never thought about 20 years ago. It is not the first example in town; the Christian Science group meets in the Ship Hotel in Duke street.
The "Potter House" banner displayed a quotation from Jeremiah. How it actually interprets Jeremiah or any other part of Scripture might be open to interpretation. The more talk there is of "Christian unity" in theory, the more visible disunity there is in practice. As the official efforts on "Ecumenism" accelerated in the 20th century, doctrinal and morality splits between churches and within churches multiplied like a metastatic cancer. Contraception, divorce and remarriage, ordination of women, the nature of God, the Resurrection, the Incarnation, the role of Mary, the Eucharist..... As heroic efforts were made to achieve union between Rome and Canterbury, internal divisions and disputes made the exercise ever more fatuous. The expansion of "House Churches" and mini-churches seems to have no limit - except the ultimate limit where very family and eventually every person is his/her own church, Pope and congregation.
