Above Bar Church

Due to a family commitment in the morning, today the Church Searchers are off to an evening service.


Above Bar Church
69 Above Bar Street
Southampton
SO14 7FE.

Evening Service

From the Church website:

Evening Service

Starts at 6:30pm and normally lasts around 90 minutes. As in the morning there is a mixture of styles of worship and bible based teaching.

There are no creche or children's activities at this service.

Refreshments are served after the service.

The Review
Somehow we've done it again. The service we attended this evening is not representative of a normal evening service at ABC, as they had a special guest speaker, Gary Habermas giving a special apologetic style talk on resurrection. Fortunately one of the Intrepid Duo has been to a few other evening services here and advise on how much of tonight was usual practice.

We parked up in Southampton Guildhall car park about 6:15pm. Above Bar Church is quite unusual as its a purpose built modern church on the upper floors of a building on the main shopping street in Southampton. We entered using the Above Bar Street entrance, had our hands shaken by a steward, climbed a couple of flights stairs and came to the lounge and information desk. Following the lead of others entering we went into the main auditorium and were allocated a seat by another steward. The main auditorium is octagonal with a warm wood ceiling, a dais with a large central projector screen, and a balcony along the left and back sides. The organist appeared to be hanging in mid air on the left, the music group was on the left of the dais below the organist, and a simple wooden altar sat opposite the music group on the right. An open bible and two candle holders were displayed on the altar.

There were wooden pews with padding radiating out from the dais, and the seating immediately in front of it were movable wooden chairs. The place was for want of a better word, absolutely packed. Our estimate was 250 to 300 people. There was a wide age range present, from teenagers to pensioners, though no obvious young children. The 9:15 am service is advertised as being for families, and we were told that at that service and the 11am service are very busy, though the balcony is not opened. Apparently there used to be one morning service but this was split due to the high numbers. There were quite a few latecomers as well! The large congregation tonight could probably be attributed to the guest speaker. NIV bibles and Mission praise hymn books were place in the pew backs, though the songbooks were not used, the hymn lyrics being projected onto the screens.

There was no formal liturgy as such. The basic format of the service was 3 worship songs, notices, prayers, bible reading, 3 more worship songs, Gary Habermas' speech, closing prayer, and closing song. There was a chap called Ben leading the service and the minister John Risbridger lead the worship, gave the notices and closed the service with prayer. He also lead the question and answer session after the service. The first set of prayers were for areas of conflict around the world such as Gaza, Somalia and Kenya, and the second set were for the congregation, that they would learn from what had been said tonight. The bible readings were not always identified, though one was definitely from 1 Corinthians, which fitted with what was said in the talk.

The music group as far as we could see over the heads of the congregation included, bass and electric guitar, organ, piano, flute, violin, drums and keyboard. There were also three female singers and the minister, who provided other percussion on shakers at appropriate moments. The worship was very lively, uplifting and energetic. There was a mix of older and newer worship songs played by the whole music group, and the old favourite Thine Be The Glory played by the organist alone. If you're interested in that kind of thing, the songs were; Our God is an Awesome God , Let Everything That , How Great is our God, Jesus Hope of the Nations, There is a New Song in my Mouth, and In Christ Alone.Our only criticisms of the music was that it was rather loud and we felt that the bass was turned up a bit too much. The Older one likes to be able to hear themselves among the crowd into to make sure they sing in tune! We also noticed that 3 microphones were hanging from the ceiling over the congregation amplifying the singing and making the whole worship experience even louder. Whilst useful in encouraging the shy to sing, (louder congregation noise provides shy with cover they need in order to feel comfortable singing), it could also be taken as a bit of congregation manipulation, artificially enhancing the experience to increase the transcendental atmosphere. That said, it was still pretty awesome worshipping with so many people, and the change of pace that came with the traditional rendering of Thine Be the Glory worked surprisingly well. We've never heard it sung so loudly! It sounded amazing!

Now, onto the talk by Gary Habermas. Distinguished Research Professor and Chair, Department of Philosophy and Theology at Liberty University, Lynchberg, VA, USA, he somewhat eloquently put forward an apologetic argument using the writings of Paul for resurrection. Though the clarity of his actual words were hampered a little by the PA system and his accent, through basing his argument on the writings of Paul that critical scholars view to be written by him, rather than on the less trusted Gospel reports he was highly convincing on most levels. He used historiography and history to illustrate how Paul's eyewitness testimony of a Risen Jesus, approx five years after the crucifixion is very rare in ancient history, where it is far more common to work with biographies written of people hundreds of years after their lives. He also pointed out how Paul spoke with others who had met Jesus, specifically Peter, John and James, about whether he was right about Jesus. These four men were eventually martyred for their beliefs, and Habermas pointed out that this must mean that they believed in Jesus' divinity to a great extent. The basic premise overall was that because Paul was such an early witness to the risen Jesus, the resurrection was quite likely and that people who didn't believe in it could not come up with a viable reason what else could have happened to cause such reports. This talk lasted 40 mins, which is the longest we've heard yet. We were both a little fidgety by the end.

There was a question and answer session afterwards where one very brave non-christian student took on Habermas on the historical basis of his argument, saying that history could be misinterpreted over time and that he could not believe in the resurrection due to it not being able to be recreated by science. Habermas countered by stating how science relied on history for evidence, which didn't seem to answer the chaps question. Another member of the congregation, this time a christian, played devil's advocate and pointed out that science can be done in a vacuum of knowledge, without relying on the ideas/evidence found by others in history, though this would take a lot of time and resources. Habermas didn't really seem to have an answer to this, going back to how people accept the happening of the 1066 Norman invasion and the content of Churchill's speeches based on eyewitnesses. Habermas had the Intrepid Duo until he used the Turin Shroud as scientific evidence for resurrection, admittedly as something that doesn't seem explainable by science (i.e. how do you print an xray on fabric given it's age) though there seemed to be an implication of it being somewhat divine. If he had stuck with his argument about Near Death experiences, something slightly more scientifically documented, he would have seemed much more credible.

We stayed for the hot drinks after the service, but due to the large numbers no one came to speak to us. Also the tea was rather weak, though the coffee was good. In order to get some more information we presented ourselves to the information desk (as newcomers were directed in the service) and were given lots of leaflets about the church. There are a huge range of activities going on from small groups, children, youth and student ministries, Korean services, prayer and audio ministries, prayer meetings, and a Fair Trade cafe open to the public on Saturday morning. Clearly a thriving church.

The Short Version
Traditional/Modern: Rather modern.
Formal/Informal: Fairly informal. Informal dress and no set liturgy, but the layout of the building and the style of leadership was slightly more formal and 'churchy'.
Solemn/Lively: Very Lively! Jokes in the talk and people clapping and charismatic arm waving during the worship. No praying in tongues though.

Great: The chance to worship with lots of other people in a lively and happy fashion. The speaker was very interesting, even if we did not agree with everything he said and, obviously he is not a usual feature.

Not so great: We didn't feel very welcomed as just another couple of faces in the crowd. The older one also felt that at 40 mins, Gary Haberman's talk was a bit long!

Access: The Above Bar entrance has stairs, there is a side entrance on Ogle Road, the main entrance has a lift to all floors.

This review was written by the Older one, with edits by the Younger one.