Posted on 11/24/2020 6:08:02 PM PST by marshmallow
Gathering in barns, cafes and bookshops, worshippers are flocking to illegal services around the country
It sounds like the build-up to an illegal rave. Invitations are passed by word of mouth to trusted people. Minimal information – time, directions – is quietly given with pleas for discretion. Once everyone is assembled in a barn on a remote farm – “away from prying eyes,” says the organiser – it begins.
This is no rave, but an English church service under lockdown, and the organiser is a Protestant pastor. The Christians who will gather illegally in the west of England on Sunday morning – as they have for the past two Sundays – will pray, read from the scriptures, sing hymns and listen to a sermon.
“We’ve been holding clandestine services since this lockdown began,” the pastor told the Observer, speaking on condition of anonymity. “It feels weird for us to act this way. People have said it feels more like an underground church in China.
“The fact that we have to sneak around to worship God, in fear of criminal prosecution, is alarming. But we do what we have to do.”
According to church leaders the Observer has spoken to, an increasing number of congregations are breaking the law in order to worship together, an activity banned under current restrictions. Some are moving to different premises, others meeting covertly in regular church buildings.
Last Sunday police intervened at the Angel evangelical church in Clerkenwell, north London, after its pastor publicly announced his intention to hold a service. In Gedling, Nottinghamshire, two arrests were made at the Mustard Seed Christian bookshop and cafe after a gathering of up to 50 people last weekend.
(Excerpt) Read more at theguardian.com ...
Don’t announce the services! They need “church gone underground” lessons. You just meet, do not even say what the meeting is.
Are the Muslims facing the same restrictions? Have not heard.
Worshiping in the catacombs of anti Christian Britain.
The separatist (before they were called pilgrims) had to do the same thing.
Yes. “Small groups,” although not in the *current sense, will become the churches. These holiday lock-downs are premptive strikes on what the Church would do.
*they are rather fluffy now.
Why announce clandestine meetings? Do it, and let God deal with it. “Vengeance is mine”, says the Lord. Maybe one last major event warning before the end of our civilization or world.?
Why announce clandestine meetings?
Sounds like the old Soviet era church.
I read The Persecutor by Sergei Kourdakov and it sounds like this.
I realize there is some controversy about whether the book is true or not, but I found it very credible. I did fit with other accounts I heard of the persecution of Christians in the USSR.
My church has added 50;small groups meeting regularly in homes.
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