St James, Didsbury (C of E)

When visited:

27th November, 2005, 10:30am

Location:

Just off the big corner in Wilmslow Road, Didsbury

Reputation:

St James and the daughter church, Emmanuel, have a reputation as strong open evangelical congregations. St James is supposedly the more stylistically traditional of the two.

Type of Service:

According to the website, it should have been Morning Prayer, being the 4th Sunday of the month. The weekly notice sheet on the website did not indicate otherwise. Searching afterwards, I did however find a mention that it was a combined service at Emmanuel at the bottom of the monthly events planner thing (pdf rather than html).

What Happened:

There were four of us there - me, a bloke aged 20 or so and a young couple of East Asian extraction. The building was dark, quiet and locked, with no indication of why. The noticeboard showed only details of last week's services.

Website:

yes - it looks ok, but the "weekly" notice sheet has been known to be three months out of date.

Overall:

This is a church that is either actively trying to discourage new members or that has a grossly incompetent communications system. I might try again, but if I was looking for a church to settle at, I wouldn't go back here.