The church in Philadelphia had ‘endured patiently’, ‘not denied [Christ’s] name’, and had ‘kept God’s word’. Yet they were under threat from religious people who claimed to be God’s people and yet were not [the synagogue of Satan]. They had little strength left. 

Driving through the streets of outer London yesterday I came across what I thought was a Punjabi procession. Traffic was tailed back, police were out. Yellow jacket stewards and trainee cops were stewarding. 3 lit up trucks blared out noise in front of the large Sikh temple. 

My son and I had pulled round the backstreets to avoid the jam, navigating through streets and past shops that could have been in India if it weren’t for the gloomy sky and the colder climes. Wikipedia estimates the area has a 28% Sikh population, 20% Muslim and 14% Hindu population, and it has been called ‘Little Punjab’.  Suddenly we came upon the front of the short parade. The first truck was a giant TV on wheels broadcasting the events behind it. We looked again, and realised it was an advent nativity parade. 

The young crowd we saw were mainly young, British Asian Christians (plus a couple of white clergy I recognised) and more than one hundred of them paraded behind the illuminated carried cross and the lorries bearing nativity scenes, proclaiming their faith loudly and boldly on the streets of Southall. It turns out 22% of the area are Christians as well, and the Churches Together for Southall were happy to join in what I guessed was a local tradition of parading, with Indian Christian music broadcast out of their speakers, along with prayers and calls out to the community in Punjabi as well as English. It was an amazing sight to behold. 

photo credit: Southall Churches Together Promotion Poster, source St George’s Southall Facebook Page

The rise of religion in 21st Century Britain took a lot of secular and religious commentators by surprise. There was an assumption it would genteelly pass away, along with the Church of England, which was kindly obliging at a rate of 1% decline per year for half a century. 

What wasn’t taken into account was that along with the increase in other world faiths in the UK, about 5000 new churches were planted from 1980-2010, with around 500,000 attending Black (&Asian) Majority Churches. Five of the ten largest churches in the UK were led by Nigerian background believers. Many African, Caribbean and Asian Christians had had an Anglican heritage before they, or a parent or grandparent, had come to the UK. Very sadly, the worship and welcome many experienced in Anglican churches led them to find a spiritual home elsewhere.  

One Anglican Nigerian (Arch)Bishop, Ben Kwashi, was so frustrated by this he began ordaining doctors and other professionals moving to the UK. He encouraged them to group together as self-supporting Anglican churches. This structure proved both low cost and easy to replicate. They now have 43 congregations, and on 15 October 2024 one of their number Rt Revd Dr Gideon Chukwudalu was consecrated as Bishop. These ‘Anglican Missionary Congregations’ [AMC] have found a home as a separate diocese under the guidance of Bishop Andy Lines in the GAFCON proto-province of the Anglican Network in Europe.  

At a much higher cost other Anglican networks have planted resource churches, often with millions of pounds of seed money from the central Church of England and Dioceses for building redevelopment and staffing. It will be interesting to see which strategy will prove most effective in the long-run. Is there a limit to the bi-vocational approach of the AMC as congregations multiply and get larger? Will some of the ordained doctors and others need to go full time, and will that institutionalise it and make it lose its planting zeal? Will resource churches come unstuck over issues of finance and succession? Sending inexperienced leaders to run high profile new churches, with a 3-5 year clock ticking on funding subsidies, means there have and will be casualties along the way. Further forward will they survive succession planning where Diocesan bishops may have radically different values and yet  (unlike churches with evangelical patronage) have the right of both presentation and appointment of the next vicar?  And when the planting era wanes, will they be vulnerable to the next ‘new kid on the block’, some newer, brighter, younger church that eclipses their attractional pull? 

The point is even the rapidly growing churches feel vulnerable. If you get a leader of any growing church on an honest day they know they are vulnerable to one or more of: lack of volunteers, lack of expertise, big donors moving away, new attractional church replacing them, some leadership failing or fallout, managing expectations after a season of stellar growth, and personal burnout. Strange as it may seem, almost all of us feel weak. 

It echoes wider societal trends where those in the top 5% income bracket remain very worried about their income (£80000pa+). But when a top 5% attendance Anglican church in England starts at 129 adults and 29 children, and an urban parish might easily have 8000+ people in it, the vulnerability is real. 

That’s why we have to get our eyes off ourselves and gaze upwards. The book of Revelation is written to vulnerable people and it tells us that the Lamb Wins. Here in Chapter 3 the Philadelphians had lots of reasons to feel vulnerable. They were the youngest of the 7 cities. They were built on a tectonic fault line that had caused devastation in living memory in the earthquake of AD 17, with echoes in AD 60. Its economy was based on agriculture, and the economy plummeted in value when Emperor Domitian demanded a 50% reduction in vineyards to encourage grain growth for his overextended troops.

Like Smyrna the Christians in Philadelphia receive no rebuke. Like them they are juggling relations with the Jewish community and enduring assaults on their identity from ‘those who claim to be Jews but are not’. But Jesus wants them to know that they are the true inheritors of the Jewish promise of a Messiah. As in Isaiah 22;22 he holds the key of David and can open a door for them that no-one can shut. 

He promises that 

Since you have kept my command to endure patiently, I will also keep you from the hour of trial that is going to come on the whole world to test the inhabitants of the earth. I am coming soon. Hold on to what you have, so that no one will take your crown. 

Then he makes a promise special to a city that might face tectonic destruction: 

The one who is victorious I will make a pillar in the temple of my God. Never again will they leave it. I will write on them the name of my God and the name of the city of my God, the new Jerusalem, which is coming down out of heaven from my God; and I will also write on them my new name. 

There is a new city coming, a hope to live for, and it has earthquake proof, indestructible pillars. It is a place you never have to flee from for safety. Hold On!

This letter also gives a first taste of some bigger themes in Revelation. 1) Whose name is written on you? Either the name of the beast (13:8), encoded as the number 666, or the name of the Lamb and his Father (14.1, 20.4). 2) What is his new name? It is a secret name written on his thigh in 19:12 & 16. It reveals him to a world that does not yet know him as the ‘King of Kings and Lord of Lords’ (think: ‘Caesar of Caesars’, ‘President of Presidents’, ‘Sultan of Sultans’ to hear how political that sounds). And, 3) what is the new Jerusalem? It is the dwelling place of God with humanity as a new heaven touches a new earth and unites us again as one. 

Dear friends, This is a message of hope to a weak community that may give us hope too in our varying weaknesses. Their weakness is ‘not the most important thing about them’. Their obedience is. They have lived in the world but are not of it, and have overcome. They just need to hold on.

‘However much they feel hemmed in by their circumstances, what matters is the sovereignty of Jesus as the one who can open doors for them… including the one that really matters, and which leads into a place of peace, security and salvation in God’s presence.’1

So whether you’re in the 95% or 5% by church size, whether you are growing, plateauing, steady state, slow decline or plummeting. Whatever it is that you have had to endure: Keep enduring. Keep going.There is One who is championing you. He knows that you have gone through. He knows what people have done to you. He knows that they were thinking they were serving Him by doing so when they were not. He is urging you to hold on to your crown. He is commending you for not denying his name, even when you felt like you were in a tiny minority. And He is making great promises about your future, and handing them to you like a cheque, written in His blood. A cheque that has eternal value and guarantees you an inheritance with Him, forever.

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  1. Paul, Ian Revelation TNTC, 2018, 110. ↩︎

Read More in this Series

The Lamb Wins Whole Series Catch Up : Introduction: Chp 1: Hope is Here | Chp 2: First, Love: Ephesus | Chp 3: Fear Not: Smyrna | Chp 4: I Know: Pergamum | Chp 5: Tolerate This: Thyatira | Chp 6: Wake Up: Sardis