Rev. Alan Taplin

1981 - 1986

Alan & Joyce Taplin

"How old are you?" demanded the boy.
"Free!" proudly proclaimed the smaller child.
"That all? I'm six and a half."
"Gosh!"

Attitudes to age are fascinating. Children like to include fractions of a year and to look ahead to their next birthday. "I'm six and three quarters – nearly seven." Such a tendency continues into adolescence when a well-developed and 'fashionably underdressed' fifteen year old girl claims to be nearly eighteen. From the twenties onwards, the trend is then reversed for the next four or five decades when people knock a few off. I, for example, was thirty-five for many years: almost to the point of my eldest son being older than I! Then, later in life, the minimising reverts back to exaggeration once more as people recognise that age is something to treasure and of which to be proud. So they claim to be eighty-five, when we know they are only in their mid seventies. As I say, attitudes to age are fascinating and most of us are inclined to be more creative and imaginative than accurate. By our attitude to age we say a lot about ourselves.

But what about buildings – buildings like your Church? One hundred years seems a long time by our reckoning. Fancy! In 1905, just two years after the first powered air flight, in the middle of the Women's Suffragette movement and the year that Albert Einstein presented the special theory of relativity, Park Road Wesleyan Church, Rushden, was opened. As the small child said "Gosh!" We are right to be impressed.

Of course there have been changes to the buildings, some during my time here in the eighties, and of course it is true that the church consists of people not stones. Nevertheless, the physical surroundings and material details do affect the work of God and the buildings can make it easier or harder to afford a welcome to others. So a Centenary for the buildings inevitably make us all look back and remember our participation in a slice of those hundred years of worship and service.

Whatever else that does, it ought to make us thankful; thankful for what God has done through the people of God here in 100 years. Then, like the six and a half year old boy, having summed up the past in a glance, we can then concentrate on the present and the future. If this Centenary celebration exerts an influence on all of us and makes us better equipped "to serve the present age" then it will be more than a bit of nostalgia, but a preparation for a mission. God grant that may be so.

May we mean the words we sing ....

"We'll praise him for all that is past, and trust him for all that's to come."

Alan Taplin