I’m 12 years old and I’m standing in a pew with my mother, brother and sisters and my paternal grandparents, said one participant. My father, uncle and aunt are in the choir. My four cousins are seated near us. I’m singing the hymns and I’m wearing my best clothes and that includes a hat – a new or remade model summer and winter. There’s a strong sense of family and rightness of it all.
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There were some great Congregational families, comparable to the McCaugheys in Presbyterianism and the Cato family in Methodism.
One participant remembered her family, the Sambells, in church. They formed the backbone of Wyclif Congregational, Surrey Hills.
I am about three. I sit in the second front pew in the centre. (No-one sits in the front pew except, later, a shabby old man, and his presence there is noted.) I stay in church for the whole service for only a short while; I must be too old for crèche and too young for something else.
My grandmother, Rose, sits with my grandfather near the front towards the right-hand end of the long centre pew, in a black coat and shiny straw hat. She will be the head of the extended family when my grandfather dies in about five years. My father and uncles, middle-aged and distinguished men, are like dutiful children in ‘going to speak to Mother’ after church, but all her children are attentive and dutiful; the men go to greet her on Sundays, but the women have been running around doing things for her all week while the men are at work.
In the choir are a load of Sambells: Auntie Lil, Auntie Elsa, my mother, my great-aunt Amy, my sister Lorraine for a while, and Auntie Enid. There are no family men in the choir; Sambell men of that generation can’t sing.
My Uncle Stan, who is Church Secretary, sits on the left-hand end of the centre pew further back; he will get up, walk to the front and read the notices before the collection. As soon as he begins, people will start rummaging in purses and pockets for their money. He will end the notices with the words “Your freewill offering will now be received” and the collection will be taken up.
Near Grandma are other family members: Auntie Joyce and her friend Nan and Auntie Beryl, Uncle Eric and Brian and Judith. Perhaps Beryl and Eric sit behind me; I can remember Eric’s beautifully-modulated English voice saying “Hallowéd” in the Lord’s Prayer while the rest of us say “Hallowed” with our Australian accents. Uncle Neil is there somewhere, with my cousin Noelle. My Uncle Keith expresses his independence by sitting somewhere else.
I sit beside my father. When the sermon begins, he reaches into his breast pocket and takes out a propelling pencil and a sheet of paper, perhaps a church notice which is blank on the back. During the sermon, which I believe to last for five hours, he draws cats with funny faces on the paper.
Those of us who are not related to Wyclif’s largest family nevertheless understand our position there by placing ourselves in relation to the Sambells.
Let us consider my friend Adrian Sambell.
Ade’s grandmother was bridesmaid to my maternal grandmother Amy, but my grandmother couldn’t attend her best friend’s wedding because she was in a delicate condition at the time. That situates me. The mother of my best friend Jan is a friend of Ade’s aunt Beryl Firth (née Sambell). That situates Jan. The son of Karl Woolley and his wife, a charming, quiet, silver-haired couple of German extraction who have suffered from Karl’s name during World War II, will later marry the step-daughter of Ade’s Auntie Lil. The Woolleys are tied in retrospectively.
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Other participants similarly remember Congregationalism as a family church:
When I think of church and family, I am immediately and nostalgically swept back in time and place. And what a warmly embracing place it is. All of my life's experiences have in some way been measured in richness and goodness against my Congregational childhood and in no small way against the knowledge of my parent's life at church before me. The stories of my mother's youth are intrinsically bound up with this church. The friendships forged remained constant as this generation worshipped and socialized together from infancy to old age.
My parents always sit in one of the left hand set of pews. A couple of rows in front are the Sunday School group to whom the minister addressed his mini-sermon before they shuffle out to Sunday School. How slowly that time in church passes. I sit on the edge of the wooden seat desperately trying not to breathe too loudly because then, horror upon horror my stomach may rumble and every eye will turn to me. The humiliation of it! Needless to say the hushed tone of prayers and sermons are the hardest to bear whereas hymn singing is a saviour; no one can hear my tummy.
When my father is on duty and has to take up the offering, a different worry washes over me. What if he drops the plate? What if he trips? Is there any end to embarrassment? At the same time I am proud of his involvement. We are part of the church family. No blow-ins we. We are deeply rooted in this place and with these people and we are safe.
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One day a tennis ball accidentally ricochets into the vestry of the Kew church. It is somewhere I have passed through, but never really taken notice of—almost a bit too hallowed, I think.
On this particular day, I happen to look on the wall at the photos of the founders of that church. One rings a bell—‘I know that face!’ Sure enough, on enquiring further, I am informed that this is James Venn Morgan, my great-great-grandfather, in whose home the church members have met for a couple of years until the church is built and opened in 1853.
Knowing this, too, is part of my heritage, adds to my feeling of belonging, as though a circuit has been completed.
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My family is at church, and I feel that I belong. But I feel the same with Rex Phillips who is not related to me. The whole church is one family.
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Next: Chapter 10. Ministers' Families
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