Ambassadors Visit St. John’s, Hatboro

The Ambassadors were back on the road today. Our visits are taking us farther as we have visited most of the churches near us.

Today we visited St. John’s, Hatboro. Our former pastor’s wife served here until they both fled the synod in 2006. We were surprised to find St. John’s still in transition or in transition once again.

We turned at the road just before the church, seeing a few parking spots along the church. We found these spots were reserved so we set out to park on the street. Parking was allowed on only one side of the street and NOT the side we happened to be on. As we drove, looking to remedy that, we found the exit from their parking lot and we entered against the Do Not Enter Sign. We would have had to cross a four-lane highway to find the proper entrance. No one was coming; no harm done.

Bishop Burkat criticized our congregation for not having a parking lot, but the walk from the parking lot this morning to the front door of the church was considerably farther than we ever had to walk after parking on the street in East Falls.

We were early. We found a nice outdoor sitting area, a memorial garden surrounded by shrubbery and begonias.

We entered a church which was much wider than it was long with very long pews flanking a center aisle. The only window was a circular stained window at the peak of the domed roof.

We were attending the second service of the morning at 11 am. There were just shy of 40 present and the people used the full width and depth of the church in choosing seats. We do not know how many were present at 9 am service. We were reminded that the synod trustees never visited our worship before announcing they intended to close our church and a visit by one of the trustees a week before synod assembly reported only the attendance at one of our two morning services in their report to the assembly. According to the online newsletter, St. John is one of the larger churches in SEPA.

We managed to hit another stewardship Sunday (our fourth!) with all the lessons addressing Christian giving. A member, a retired school teacher, opened the service with a temple talk and spoke passionately about the congregation’s food pantry mission. It was a service he had learned as a boy scout and he was proud of St. John’s enterprise in helping the needy of their community in a supportive and dignified manner.

The names of the pastor and music director were not in the bulletin but their web site says that the pastor is The Reverend Marcia Bell, of Mount Airy Seminary, and the music director is Michael Brinkworth. The pianist enhanced the hymns with many flourishes and upped the tempo of the closing hymn, Take My Life, as a spirited recessional. The width of the sanctuary seemed to affect singing.

Pastor Bell’s sermon talked about the need to make commitments and to take risks in determining offerings to the church. That message probably hit our ears differently than the congregation’s as Redeemer members took risks, made commitments and gave generously only to have Synod confiscate our assets and put our members in jeopardy with law suits as they try to get still more.