On our visit to South Wales last week we were privileged to visit exciting churches. The first is built next to a Mediaeval Shrine, and the second is a coming together of two traditional denominations by the seaside! Neither is what you would expect!

Llanfair Uniting Church, Penrhys

Here is Penrhys, supposedly a visionary estate designed to lift the mining community out of the Rhondda valley-bottom up onto the hilltop – it may have given the residents amazing views, but also created terrible housing problems and social isolation. When I was a social worker, I was there in the 1970s and have awful memories of life on Penrhys. Is it coincidental that it is on the Holy site of pilgrimage to Mother Mary, considered in Medieval times as one of the great shrines? For it has been the Church which took up the vision of building the Kingdom of God. Set up as an eight denomination LEP, its ethos is in its strapline “A Church for everyone” The local primary children come each week to the church. Over the years its ministers and people have built a chapel ‘Llanfair’ in English, ‘Church of Mary’, and developed a couple of derelict flats for community use, with second-hand boutique, laundry, homework club, craft sessions and much more, all despite huge battles over funding, and sadly with some really-needed facilities having to close. But for me this is Church at its best, giving dignity and hope to all – at present with no minister, though with ministerial support, the local people are training to be accredited worship leaders. The picture above shows us celebrating communion and I can tell you the quality of their worship is of Heaven. A former minister of the church, John Morgans took many groups to Caldy Island for Bible study weekends. I remember the abbot there saying that all the thousands who go to the island looking for God will find God, but God made in their own image. If they want to meet the real God, then they must go home and into their community and God will be there.
God is certainly in Penrhys – it is a contemporary shrine!

https://assemblymoderators.urc.org.uk/contemporary-shrine-and-temporary-church/#more-3598