Back in the Pews.

My absence has been noted… By God and that matters. So today is Maundy Thursday and I hauled my backside to church for the first time when I didn’t have to since about 2019. I have “Struggled” with my faith and I had for a time not wanted to marry in a church so I wouldn’t be a hypocrite but God always finds a way of getting his kids home safe.

So here I will talk about my struggles with “Faith” and the established church. Sit back and get comfortable, this is going to be a long testimony.

I was born to 2 parents who were Church of England, and was merrily baptised in that tradition. I went to the Sunday school and had a wonderful time. I met my lifelong friend Yinka there.

When I was about 3 the priest who baptised me, a “Rev Jim Jerico” left the parish, having divorced a woman (back when divorce was considered an almighty sin) and as a result my parents went looking for spiritual pastures new. My dad in Sierra Leone went to a Methodist church because “all the cool kids went and it had its own organ” so we ended up a Bermondsey Central Hall Methodist church.

This is where the bulk of my memories of church lay. So let me set the scene. A church of circa 200 people, 50% under 18. The other 50% were comprised of their parents, and a smattering of grandparents, singles and elderly white people who’d lived in Bermondsey for decades.

What a wonderful time. I went to church with 3 people in my class in primary school (Yinka was in my class at school as well) and met basically all my first crushes, Hamish, Simon and Richard. All black boys. I once used to dream of being Mrs Hamish one day. That will never happen.

Dad was president of the Wesley guild (service + food) he was also president of the Sierra Leone Fellowship and would preside over the annual thanksgiving service (service + food) we’d go on church outings (food) a Catholic lady who’s husband was Methodist would make us “Puff puff” (Ghanaian desserts) every Sunday, which as soon as service was over we’d literally run to get our hands on. I had 4 grandmas, each looking out for my welfare, disciplining me mainly to make sure I ended up a rounded, respectful person. But there was also treats, “Grandma from Deptford” as I called her a Mrs Jane Davies would make me Jolofrice whenever she’d make for her own grandson, and we’d drop her from Bermondsey to Deptford which was quite a trek!

So you get the point. There was a lot of love, lot of Christianity, lot of charity and discipline and a hell of a lot of food. Heaven knows I wasn’t going to grow up malnourished if my church family had anything to say about it. We actually didn’t have much, we were all technically poor everyone of us. My aunt Sabrina lived in the church hostel for the homeless at token rents for a time. But we had love all of us, for one another. So I learnt the easy way to love God because all the adults around me showed me love, showed me that by loving God, I too could find happiness as long as I was obedient to his laws and treated my fellow man with love and respect. I lived this way until I was almost 14 and my dad became a Methodist Minister.

Then the world really came crashing down. I moved from a “Black church” with a big heart to a white, soulless church. For the most part these people weren’t bad. They were just passive. Church was something you did on Sunday’s not a way you lived your life. It reminds me of 1 Corinthians. “If I have all the knowledge in the world, but have no love, then I have nothing” they had comfortable lives, God had provided for them and all was well… So they went and created problems because problems didn’t exist in their lives for real.

The problems they created was they became intolerant to everything and everyone that wasn’t them. They wouldn’t tolerate small changes in their service to accommodate children and as a result drove away families. Children were expected to be seen not heard. Yes in 2005 people still felt that way “Because their kids did it”

I also should mention the shocking loss of identity. My name no longer mattered, I was the “minister’s daughter” I felt this most acutely in a “black church” near the centre of Southampton. I rarely ever went because my parents loved being around black people, would talk for ages with them, but I’d been disrespected, so I shunned that church.

Then there was the “slum” comment which I will never in my life forget.

2 people. One rich, one “poor” lived on the same street. The Rich lady lived on the top of the hill and you could literally see the “poor” (this woman wasn’t poor, not truly, she just wasn’t as rich as the rich woman) woman’s house. The “Poor woman” was a mother of 2 who suffered from post natal depression when the comment was made. Her husband was in the Navy and she was left in charge of 2 young boys. The boys were wonderfully behaved and very likeable. But the rich woman said that the poor woman lived in slum. Because the poor woman lived in council housing due to her husband being in the Navy. How cruel.

Then there was the £3,000 speaker covers. Yes, let’s talk about that.

I hate idleness in all its forms, but when Hedge End Methodist church was repainted in 2005 just prior to us arriving I had no objection to it being a sort of baby blue colour. Its actually beautiful. But what I did object to was them spending £3,000 on speaker covers that matched the walls exactly and calling it “God’s work” no it isn’t. You paid £3,000 for a product and then got…the product you asked for, how is “God working for you” when you purchase outrageously expensive speaker covers. Especially when you only had I remember £100 a year for Sunday school? Even if its £100 per month or £1,200 you still spent 3 years worth of Sunday school almost on Speaker covers for a vanity project. Perspective please.

Then in 2010 when I felt that things couldn’t get worse…I moved to Egham. As it turns out, things can always get worse.

The people in charge of the manse (not the Minister in the Methodist church but church council leaders) were miserly so did the house that I would live in for the next 4 years on the cheap. And we were made to feel that cheapness everyday. The carpets were depressing, the congregation much like Hedge end was mainly elderly with the exception of one church Virginia Water. Egham Methodist church, on the high street, was primed for a good crowd. Execpt another church council leader, Joseph, hated children. So all my efforts to be kind to the Sunday school and grow the Sunday school were thwarted by his constant bitterness and unkindness, thinly veiled with “British manners” he was the typical “red pill guy” always handing you feedback even if it wasn’t wanted or needed. So at all times I was in the top 5 youngest people in the church. I was 19-23 at the time. The next youngest would be a mum then a friend of mine from the States and then my own mum, 29 years my senior. Not many people to talk to. Couple that with the fact that there was 0 DOLLARS for the Sunday school and I was funding the whole thing entirely off my own back and you get why there were no kids in that church.

Then there was Virginia Water, the church with the kids, were my dad’s predecessor had set up power base. Yes, you heard correctly. Power base. She was still fighting for the loyalty of her old parishioners and would set up little games and “traps” in the form of “good works” and “causes” (read idleness and encouraging idleness) She was the epitome of “looking right not being right” All she wanted to do was cause trouble for my dad. I tried as a daughter to fix the situation, including writing sermons to make my dad more “Hip” making PowerPoint to perfection to go with kids songs and standing up in church and doing actions to these kids songs. God knows I tried to bail out a sinking ship. I would remember children’s’ names, and birthdays, speak to the parents and in general be my dad’s “Link” or eyes and ears in that church. God help me I aged a good 10 years in the space of a couple. I remember crying in church because dad refused to use a sermon I’d spent the night writing in one of those “do or die” moments for his leadership of the church. I eventually had my strongest opponents children at my wedding as flower girls. I hold no grudges. God bless them all. “Forgive them Father, for they know not what they do.” They didn’t know the impact their idleness would have on my mental health. Or that of my dad, they were for the large part pawns in his predecessors game. She was eventually gotten rid of because she’d upset too many people. Not before I suffered a great deal.

So I then got married and returned to Hedge End, where I didn’t stay long because I was known as “the minister’s daughter” not by my name.

Then I moved to Whitsbury a small town in Hampshire. I went to the Methodist church once. Saw there was 12 people, knowing that it didn’t have a future, I didn’t go back.

Then I went to a churches together service were I met… Alistair. I brilliant young Baptist priest. He was a talented preacher with a passion for Jesus and all his creation, he loved politics and had an interest in humanity. Loved modern hymns and ways of worship. I went to the Baptist pretty solidly for a few years until they threw him out for being gay. That was the beginning of the end for me. (the official BS reason was they didn’t “like how he spoke to them” but them and their lies can burn in hell for all I care. It was homophopia, pure and simple. And more simply than that, it was bullying.)

The end came when my ex husband was cheating on me and I the entire church knew. Harvest festival of 2018 My ex stood up in church and thanked God for his mistress (his actual words were “special friend” but everyone knew what he was on about and people came and congratulated him on it. All while I sat there being humiliated.) The next Sunday, I wasn’t meant to be at church, my work system was down and I went into my office that weekend to catch up. It was still broken so I came home in time for the Harvest meal we were meant to be at together. I walked in just in time for the meal to start and someone then announced to the entire meal that “Ben wasn’t there, he’s gone off with his special friend” essentially my ex had run away with his mistress… Only for the day. But they didn’t need to announce it to the world and for those who weren’t there from the week before, it became abundantly clear what the announcer meant.

I couldn’t stay there, so I went to the local Anglican church. The shorter services suited me, but I had seen too much cruelty, I was too broken to stay. The priest has been abundantly kind to me, always stopping to chat to me and doing his pastoral duty. I know there is a place for me in God’s house. I just need to fix myself and haul myself back there to experience it. Yet conversely from the end of my old church life to now, I have lived more by faith than ever before in my life. I went through a divorce, loss of job and a death of my father all by faith and not by sight. Hence I decided that I needed to go back and show that particular relationship with my Creator some love. For all he’s done for me, he deserves a thank you. That is all this sinner can give. A Thank You God for keeping me alive and for protecting me all these years. I have seen the ugly side of the church, the church after all is a human construct and liable to all the flaws of one. Now I would like to calmly experience God’s grace and a peace in my life that “surpassed all understanding”

Grace and Courage.

Annetta Mother Smith