{ As I count the days of Lent 2021, and list the numbers in the sub-title of this Peace, Grace, and Jazz blog, I realize the numbers are not as much fun as finding the right words to invite readers into the posts. I copped out. Maybe next year my Lenten Discipline will be to simply go back to this year’s posts and rewrite the titles. But for now, we move on to the next of our forty sanctuary visits, a unique one at that.}

St. Dunstan’s-in-the-West Church, Fleet Street, London

I am careful about using the word “unique.” It’s used inappropriately so often that I think thrice about applying it to some of the images I’ve selected for this series. I think I used that word to describe Helsinki’s “Rock Church,” the one literally (there’s another word to use cautiously) carved in stone. And then there is this sanctuary: unique because it is like that breath mint– “Is it a candy mint or a breath mint? Wait! [click, click] It’s two mints rolled into one!” (You have to be of a certain age to remember that commercial.)

Here are two churches in one sanctuary. That’s not the unique thing. A number of churches share space these days. The church I served in Richmond, VA welcomed to its facilities a Korean congregation that was being organized in its neighborhood. We met at different times, shared some limited fellowship, but pretty much stayed out of each other’s way. As the Korean church grew, it eventually moved into its own building. When the Koreans met in our sanctuary for worship, no modifications were made to the space. We were all Presbyterians and had font, table, and pulpit in common.

But look at the chancel area in this photograph. Two distinct worship centers. And it’s been this way for over fifty years. The first church to occupy the 180 year-old building is still known as St. Dunstan’s-in-the-West, an Anglican Guild Church in the City of London, on Fleet Street. The church was organized around 1000 A. D. It was in that original church that John Warfield married Rachel Clarke on July 2, 1640. Chances are that you’ve never heard of John Warfield. I have. He was my maternal 9th Great-Grandfather. That family connection is what led us to this present church. I have to admit some disappointment that I wasn’t able to stand right where their wedding took place. That building is gone. Thus, a visit to the church’s present home.

When we entered and found that unique sanctuary design, we quickly learned that the Anglicans share the church with La Biserica Ortodoxã Românã din Londra – Parohía Românã Sf Gheorghe/St Dunstan — or, more simply, The Romanian Orthodox Church. If one is merely cynical about such things, one could say the arrangement is a good way to share the expense of a nearly two hundred year old building used by a typically dwindling British congregation. I prefer to see this through my rosy glasses, and affirm a welcoming ecumenism, Christians “one in the Spirit, one in the Lord” engaging in active grace and warm hospitality.

How this union came to be I do not know. The churches’ websites might have some historical details. But I can imagine the debate when it was suggested that the architecture of the sanctuary be radically altered (altared might work too, he typed with a smile) to accommodate the Romanian immigrant congregation and its rich symbolic ornamentation. Historic sanctuaries undergo renovations through the decades, but this change was something else!

We can assume that there are occasions when the individual congregations’ schedules hit a bump or conflict. But they’ve had fifty years to get used to one another, and to appreciate one another, and to show that people of faith, even those with different creeds, can share sacred space, participate in common witness, and work together in unified mission. My rosy glasses may influence my best guesses about these two churches in one building, but when I pray, “Thy Kingdom come…” that’s what I’m talkin’ about!