This is the first of a few short posts in the run up to the closure of the Grosvenor Hall congregation that I currently have the honour of ministering to, this coming Sunday, after 136 years of faithful worship and witness.
Last Sunday I organised a Reflective Pilgrimage for a small band of interested people, looking at the history of the congregation and Belfast Central Mission, especially the early years, and I included in it a few new poems.
We began at the building where Sandy Row Methodist Church used to meet, before its closure 2 years ago. In its much larger predecessor, for the first 2 weeks of September 1889, the newly appointed Superintendent of what was then referred to as Belfast City Mission (leading to much confusion with the Presbyterian initiative of the same name) Rev. Crawford Johnson led a series of evangelistic services. But after 2 weeks of packed services, Johnson dismissed the initiative as a failure, because those who attended were already regular church-goers... But out of that failure the Mission developed...
He borrowed a tent that the Methodist Church had been using to host missions across the country during the summer, and he pitched it on a piece of undeveloped ground at the south end of Sandy Row in what became Hunter Street... And on the 18th September they started nightly events there...
The Word took on flesh
and blood and bone and grime,
And pitched a tent amidst
the poorest of neighbourhoods,
on undeveloped ground
among disregarded people,
in earshot of the workhouse.
Within that canvas tabernacle,
And others like it across the land
Men and women met with God,
The Spirit breathed upon them
as the wind blew through the tent flaps,
like ship's sails changing
the whole course of their lives.
Could any building before or since
encapsulate what happened there?
Vast arenas would be erected
And complex programmes devised
To enshrine this divine work.
But God pulls up the tent pegs
And moves on to camp elsewhere.
Tune in tomorrow to see where things moved on to next...
This attracted an entirely different clientele and the seeds for Belfast Central Mission and indeed other local churches were sown...
Famously the beginning of John’s Gospel tells us that "the Word became flesh and dwelt among us” where the word “dwelt” actually means “pitched a tent” alluding to the old Tabernacle created as a portable "house" for God during the wilderness wanderings of the people of Israel under Moses. Eugene Peterson translated that memorably saying
"The Word became flesh and blood, and moved into the neighbourhood."
John 1: 14 (MSG)
The fact that the beginnings of the Grosvenor Hall congregation and Belfast Central Mission were in a tent in an inauspicious area prompted the following thoughts:
and blood and bone and grime,
And pitched a tent amidst
the poorest of neighbourhoods,
on undeveloped ground
among disregarded people,
in earshot of the workhouse.
Within that canvas tabernacle,
And others like it across the land
Men and women met with God,
The Spirit breathed upon them
as the wind blew through the tent flaps,
like ship's sails changing
the whole course of their lives.
Could any building before or since
encapsulate what happened there?
Vast arenas would be erected
And complex programmes devised
To enshrine this divine work.
But God pulls up the tent pegs
And moves on to camp elsewhere.
David A. Campton 2025
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