New church....Old history

For the last few months I've been going fairly regularly to Good Shepherd in the evening and enjoying it a lot so I was a very downcast when they announced they were scrapping it. It was one of the few places I knew where I could sing away in the Spirit and no one minded. Not many evening services generally round here and I don't like going in the morning. Anyway I decided to try up in town, inspired partly by Ray at Good Shepherd asking people (in another context) where is your community? I realised that basically I think of myself as a Londoner rather than an Ilfordian or a Redbridgian, so maybe I should seek my community there.
Anyway TCALSS I ended up in ChristChurch, a new New Frontiers church I found via the internet. I was most struck by the fact that they were meeting in Vinopolis, the London Wine tasting museum! and met at 4.30 in the afternoon.
It turned out to be a smaller more Anglicised less noisy version of Hillsong and I had a great time, in spite of feeling like everyone's granma. Luckily the visiting preacher was also over 30, in fact he was older than me!
He did something I thought was really great. He started with the book of Luke and talked about being filled with the Holy Spirit then carried on through history, tracing various pentecostal revivals - 19th century America and Wales, the Hebridean revival, the Toronto blessing...it was a bit like an older uncle or grandad visiting the children, telling them stories about the family, giving them a sense of their family history. What a great thing to do for a baby church, filled with youngsters: you are not orphans and foundlings in the faith, you have fathers and mothers, grandparents and cousins, you are part of a worldwide family, you have History!
Anyway I thoroughly enjoyed going and as usual just got a great buzz from being up in town, going to ST Pauls and walking across the Millenium Bridge, finding my way home through the maze of cobbled streets around London Bridge, walking along the river just as the lights were coming up. I feel at home there as I never do in Ilford.