St John's Methodist Church occupied an enormous building until a few years ago. In recent years it was known as Crookes Valley Methodist Church, who occupied only a small part of the building and had eventually to sell it. The building is still there and looms above the traffic on the junction of Crookes Valley Road and Crookesmoor Road in Sheffield. If Mervyn Peak ever needed inspiration for Gormanghast, this is it!
The building was constructed in 1890 for £7000. One year later they still owed £700 and raised it at a faith tea - a sum that would still be seen as outstanding today. It was little wonder this was possible because the foundation stone made mention of names such as TW Ward and Samuel Osborn, founders of major steel firms in Sheffield.
When the church opened it had a penny bank and a 'sick and dividing club'. You paid into the latter regularly, and if you fell ill on a working day, your wife could call in before 9.30am to pick up a day's pay. There was also a library and boys brigade. The latter was armed until 1939 and some people still remember the gun room.
St John's was typical of northern 'chapel culture', many chapels offered a mixture of support and cultural activities as well as the classes and bands that early Methodism is noted for. This is partial evidence of Methodism's influence over working class movements throughout the nineteenth century. Runyon writes (page 124):
When one takes into consideration the additional leadership roles in the societies - band leaders, stewards, assistants, visitors of the sick, schoolmasters, and so forth - it becomes apparent why the movement became a seedbed for cultivating not only its own leadership but providing leaders for the labour movement and the emerging middle class as well.
So this movement did not depend upon evangelistic fervour or the hard sell but this mutual concern for each other in local neighbourhoods. The success of Methodism was determined by this and not great preachers. We should not make the mistake of thinking its successes were entirely about making new Methodists, this witness or example in local neighbourhoods must have had an impact far beyond formal Methodism. The wealthy may have built the church buildings but the poor with their mutual caring made them into churches.
Perhaps only circumstantial evidence of the effects of sanctification on wider society but we surely must concede this is worth further exploration?
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