200 years of the gospel at Grove Chapel
Paul Yeulett
2019 marks the bicentenary of Grove Chapel, Camberwell, south London, an historic, independent and non-conformist congregation in which the gospel has been faithfully preached throughout its history.
It all began with the conversion of a young man from Hertfordshire called Joseph Irons (1785-1852), who very soon experienced a desire to preach Christ and, through a remarkable series of providential events, found himself preaching at Camden Chapel in Camberwell, a mile or so from the present site of Grove Chapel. After being rejected by those in charge of the church for preaching God’s sovereign grace and faith in Christ alone, a breakaway group called Irons as pastor of a new church, in a new building.
‘Civilizational erasure’ and Evangelicalism’s future
Some of us will remember the old Orange mobile phone advert from the turn of the millennium: “The future’s bright, the future’s Orange.” The future did not, as it turned out, belong to Orange. But can it still be bright?
There is no doubt that Britain, like many of its neighbours, is afflicted by several overlapping crises. Pause for a moment and consider the state of our hospitals, our schools, our prisons, our armed forces, our borders, our economy, our collective mental health, and our social cohesion, and the picture becomes clear enough. And all this before we turn to the present condition of the Church of England. The skies all around us seem to be darkening. Recent remarks from the White House about “civilisational erasure” in Europe prompted the predictable response: what manner of incendiary rhetoric is this? Yet one cannot help wondering whether the proverbial frog in the water is quite as comfortable as it imagines, unaware that the temperature is still rising.