These are extracts from "The Pilot" in 1973. Sadly the ecumenical experiment gradually fizzled out over time, although it did leave the legacy of Communicare, although that has been repurposed for other uses.
Once the services at Communicare were so large they needed to use the main hall, but now even the Chapel is not used by Anglicans or Methodists. A lot depended on the relations between the Anglican and Methodist clergy, and the support of the Bishop of Winchester. The Bishop retired, and his successor was not nearly as visionary. Different Methodist Ministers after Gerry Stoddern showed less interest in the experiment, and it was not until recently that joint open air services began again, but the loss of a significant number of Methodist Ministers, no Anglican Vicar at St Aubin's, which itself is but a shadow of its former self, mean that it is unlikely to thrive again. Yet.. never say never! We live in hope.
Pilot Notes, 1973
By the time these notes reach you a most important experiment will have started — I mean “The Area of Ecumenical Experiment 'at St Brelade”. The Lord Bishop of Winchester [John V Taylor], at a service at St Aubin’s Anglican Church on January 21, will have given the experiment his blessing and from then on this whole project will be officially under way. I believe that this experiment will be of vital importance for all the churches of this Island. It will be a milestone in the history of Church life here and its success or failure will be of the utmost concern for every church.
St Brelade with St Aubin
“A desperate mob of some hundreds, with almost all instruments of destruction, assembled round the house in which he was preaching . . . At their first approach, the principal part of the congregation issued forth, and provided for their own safety . . . The mob, finding that all with whom they might claim brotherhood had escaped, resolved to pull down the house and bury the preacher and his friends in the ruins. Mr Clarke exhorted the friends to trust in God who was able to save, when one of the mob presented a pistol at him through the window opposite to the pulpit .”
Ireland in 1973? No, St Aubin’s in 1782, and the welcome of the local populace to a visiting Methodist preacher from England!
When, some five years later, the great John Wesley (then 84) visited the islands, things were somewhat quieter. He arrived in Jersey on Monday, August 20, 1787, preaching the same evening to a crowded meeting, at 5 the following morning and again the same evening. On the Thursday he rode out to St Mary’s, preaching with the help of an interpreter to the entirely French-speaking congregation there, afterwards commenting in his diary that the farm houses were as good as the best in Lincolnshire, and the people far better behaved !
Friday saw him back in town unable to preach outside because of the wind, but doing so inside to large numbers.
After a quiet Saturday he preached at 5 o’clock on the Sunday morning, afterwards attending the English morning service in the Town Church, commenting afterwards: “. . . but the congregation was nothing near so large as ours at 5 o’clock in the morning". He attended the Methodists’ French service at 3 o’clock then met members of the Society from all over the Island. He preached again on Monday and Tuesday evening, to five or six hundred people, finally leaving the Island on the Thursday.
At the time of this whirlwind tour Methodism was still a society within the Church of England, though the seeds of the later breakaway had probably already been well sown by official intolerance and Methodist impatience, as Wesley himself had often warned.
By Wesley’s death nine years later relations had deteriorated to such an extent that the society developed further its own organization and bit by bit became an independent religious body. The first church in St Aubin was built in 1817. Though Anglicans still prayed formally for unity, it was 130 years before anything official was done to restore it, and Dr Fisher suggested a rapprochement whereby the Free Churches might adopt the ministry of bishops on the lines of that of the Church of England.
It took another 20 years for these ideas to assume a concrete form, only finally to be turned down by the Anglicans last year. However, the impossibility of achieving full communion (sharing all sacramental actions) does not prevent a limited degree of intercommunion, within the limits allowed officially by the two Churches, and full cooperation in all other matters.
And so it happened that, last month, 185 years and five months since John Wesley landed in Jersey to visit what was still then one Church, the first formal steps were taken by Anglican and Methodist Christians in St Brelade’s to heal the breach. The establishment of an official Area of Experiment involving two denominations does not of itself amount to much; all depends on the response of our congregations to the opportunities afforded by the Area, and much too on the extent to which other churches may also later come to share our joint work.
Apart from the further development of our joint Sunday School work, interchange of preachers and the holding of joint services, the first major new developments will probably take the form of meeting in small groups to get to know each other and wait upon God’s will and guidance in prayer and common study of the Bible and other matters of common Christian concern. There is nothing spectacular about this, but nor was there about the moment in May, 1738, when an Anglican clergyman attending a meeting in Aldersgate felt his heart “strangely warmed” — from that flowed John Wesley’s prodigious mission to Britain and the world. May much flow from our common commitment to each other this 1973.
HOLY BAPTISM. December 10,Karen Michelle Le Cornu, Paul Andrew Alexandre, Dionne Jane A’court; 24, Peter Darien Kent, Neil John Every, Lee Peter Wrigglesworth.
HOLY MATRIMONY. December 23, Trevor Ralph Escott to Susan Elizabeth Waite; 30, John Robert Leveridge to Jane Elizabeth Trent.
BURIALS. .December 4, Sydney Alfred Moores, 77; 22, Ann Josephine Bisson, 70; 28, Donald Geoffrey Mauger, 59; 29, Henry Charles Ferbrache, 64.
MICHAEL HALLIWELL
Rector
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