The Long Decline
After Drake left, the church was without a pastor for five years. However, in 1868, James Hand was appointed as minister. He was approved by a unanimous vote of the members and began his ministry on the first Sunday in October, 1868. He served for five years. When he left in 1873, the membership stood at thirty, just four less than fifteen years earlier.
It was thirty-seven years before the church again had a pastor. During these years, the pulpit was filled by visiting preachers from Lancashire and Yorkshire. The membership declined steadily. It had reached a low point by 1893. The records tell us that “on August 2nd 1893 the… church consisted of Grace Garside and John Edwin Swallow, Martha Bramhall. Here we see the low state of the church in number but the Lord brought one and another to reside in the neighbourhood so that the doors of his house were kept opened. Among them might be mentioned Mrs Clegg and Mr Carpenter”.
About the year 1905 the church began to recognise the urgency of seeking another pastor. An approach was made to a Mr McKee who had recently resigned the pastorate at Hollinwood. He declined, having accepted the pastorate at Southport. The church continued the search. In the early part of 1906 a Mr Merrett (the records say “Mr Merrett he was then living at Bradford) – was invited to the pastorate. The church did not get a swift reply. It was only after seven years of “waiting and watching and praying” that Mr Merrett accepted the repeated invitation to the pastorate. He began his ministry at Charlesworth in November 1913.
In the next two years nine new members were added to the church. These will not all have been newly baptised believers. But during Merrett’s ministry eight new believers were baptised. He stayed until 1922. The records state that during these years, “many of our old friends passed away, and he was made a comfort to many in their last days”.
Mr Merrett’s ministry spanned the dark years of the First World War: the Great War (1914-1918). The war had a devastating effect on the life of many churches and chapels, especially those in rural areas. Many churches lost a whole generation of young men, massacred at Gallipoli or on the Somme. Many of those who survived never returned to the villages and farms they had left. They preferred to seek employment in the cities: few of them ever sought out a church there. And beyond these factors, the horror of the war left multitudes of people disillusioned with ‘religion’. People asked then the same question people ask today: ‘How could a God of love have allowed such a thing to happen? Where was God when my son died in the mud of Passchendaele?’ Many turned their backs on God and on the churches.
Yet God was gracious to the congregation at Charlesworth. We know of only one young man from the chapel who died in battle. He was a member of the Swallow family – one of the most long-established families of the church.
The church continued to improve the chapel premises during and after the war. In 1915, the chapel was fitted up with gas. In 1918, the ground behind the chapel was bought “so as to extend the vestries and other conveniences at a cost of £90.” In 1927, the vestries were enlarged and other alterations made, totalling £600 and in 1932, the chapel was again renovated at a cost of £110. Merrett appears to have been the last full-time minister of the church. Nor did the membership ever increase substantially.
The church celebrated its centenary in 1935.
In one sense the church had prospered. Yet we can see that hypercalvinism had done its deadening work. There were only eight ‘full members’, assured of salvation and baptised. Many others who “worshipped in the chapel” and “loved Zion” but made no profession of faith, sat in the congregation year after year. No-one urged them to repent and believe the gospel. No-one considered that they were to blame for their unconverted state. Hypercalvinist preaching taught them that they had no duty to come to Christ. Though they had no experience of salvation, they were viewed as part of the life of the chapel, church-members in all but name. They – the unconverted majority – sang in the chapel choir, contributed to the chapel funds, married chapel members, were buried in the chapel graveyard. Almost, they had become a third category, half way between the saved and the unsaved. There were the elect – church members. There were the non-elect – in the world outside. And then there were these ‘adherents’, who were somehow in a category in-between. Nobody dared say that they were as wicked and blameworthy as the godless world outside. They “belonged to us” even if they didn’t belong to the Lord.
This was the story of countless Strict Baptist chapels. They maintained their undeviating calvinism; they were determined to maintain reverent worship and the traditions of the fathers; they stood separate from the liberal churches of the day. And yet, many of them became cosy clubs from which all urgency had departed. Conversions were neither expected nor urgently sought.
Too often, an unbalanced emphasis on God’s sovereignty has decayed into fatalism and into a comfortable, inward-looking cosiness. We should take warning. No church can afford to become comfortable or self-congratulating. That attitude brought Christ’s judgement on the Laodicean church. It brought the Charlesworth church near to extinction. Yet, by God’s grace the work still goes on in Charlesworth. It is not too late for the flame to be rekindled. God grant that it may be so.
