The Folk in the Gallery

Bad news on the part of the last Prelapsarian Baptist Chapel in the country, I hear. My friend Minnie, who split from the Extremely Primitive Methodists in their last schism, was the last person to join the "Prelaps",  and she told me the news.

Minnie was always in a slightly strange status with regard to her friends in Boaz Chapel. Inasmuch as everybody else in the chapel had all grown up in the Sunday School together. And in the 1930s the tradition was that the children at Boaz, when they were in the main service (because Sunday School was before the main service, during the time that the adults were in the "Wailing and Gnashing Meeting") used to sit in what I would want to call the West Gallery - i.e. they were in the balcony at the back of the chapel, facing the preacher at eye-level because the pulpit was so enormous.

Now when they all grew a bit bigger, they became the Young People's Fellowship. This was in the days when fewer people had children, and people were drifting away. But the Young People's Fellowship remained faithful, and continued to sit in the balcony. Their own children started coming to church, but by those days Sunday School was now at the same time as the main service, so there was no need for the former Young People's Fellowship to vacate their balcony.

Eventually everybody that sat downstairs had died or moved away, leaving the Young People's Fellowship upstairs. When Minnie arrived she was politely informed that she must sit downstairs as she was not a member of the Young People's Fellowship - and, clearly, she was too old to join.

A month or so ago the bad news came through. The balcony is structurally unsound. Not so bad that it's going to fall down, as long as it's not got twelve members of the Young People's Fellowship sitting in it.

Boaz doesn't have the funds to repair the chapel. But there's plenty of room for the Young People's Fellowship to sit downstairs. So clearly, there's only one thing to do.

They're closing the chapel.