TILLSON COMMUNITY CHURCH

Tillson's very quiet. There isn't much to do. So I went to church.

My nearest church is Tillson Community Church on Grist Mill Road, on the east side of Route 32. You have to know where it is because there's nothing to see, no sign, until you're right on top of it.

This used to be a Quaker church. A New York State marker outside tells you it was founded more than half way back to the time of the first settlers in these parts, in 1800. It's a simple, undistinguished white clapboard building, with a small wooden steeple. Behind it there's a split rail enclosed graveyard with three rows of gravestones, all very simple, some with wording just scratched into the stone.

I was embarassed because I was a few mintues late, but I needn't have worried, the 10am service didn't actually start until 10.15. The dozen or so people already gathered inside chatted amicably. Dress was casual, down to jeans and sneakers. Mainly familes, people of all ages, and children.

The interior is more what you'd expect from a meeting hall than a church. It's rectangular. Rich brown wood wainscoat runs right around it and over the flat ceiling. Above the wainscoating the walls are cream. It's very bright, with waist to ceiling windows, no stained glass, insulated panes, with a lower pane that lifts for ventilation. Very practical. Curtains rather like a home. No painting, no statuary. Seven pews each side, facing slightly in to the podium at the front, giving a nice feeling of community.

At the front of the hall is a raised platform, but there's no alter. Where an alter would be is an old harmonium, with candles on it and an open bible on a stand. On the wall above it are a print portrait of a Victorian Jesus, long haired and bearded, and an illuminated sign in the form of a cross. To the left of the harmonium is an american flag.

To one side of this "alter" is a grouping of three formal upholstered chairs and an ornate table, which I presumed dated back to Quaker practice. On the other side, shielded by a balustrade and curtain, the real holy of holies, was a piano, an electronic speaker, and a music console. Two guitars learned up again the wall. I had noticed on a previous visit, just on passing by, that the church seemed very musical. At every seat was a hymnal with full music. But on my entry today I had been handed a words-only hymnal. Not many people read music, I was told. While we waited, Bob from the local florist, who I knew, sat on the piano seat and played a guitar.

After a while, he got up and came over to see me. Our pastor's away in Pennsylvania, so we're improvising, he said. What kind of church is this, I asked? Oh, plain vanilla protestant, he said. Fortunately, he was wrong.

Bob opened the service by pressing a couple of buttons on the electronic console, and music enveloped us from the speakers. A woman, one of the church members, had been pressed into service to lead us. "Good morning," she said. "Good morning," everyone replied. "Good morning, Barbara," someone said.

"Roger's away today, so we're on our own," she went on. Barbara. Roger. Clearly this wasn't going to be your usual protestant service.

This really was a community service. There was no prayerbook, and no set prayers. No "Magnificat" and "Te Deum" (which of course we used to call the "tedious" when I was a choirboy). What a relief!

Hymn numbers were announced, and we sang a batch of hymns out of the Maranatha! Music Praise Chorus Book, accompanied by Bob on the guitar and Bob's wife JoAnn on the piano. The hymns were what I think you'd call revivalist. Popular, many of them with choruses. Most copyright 1970's and 80's. We sang a hymn based on psalm 111 verse 72

Lord, You are more precious than silver:
Lord, You are more costly than gold:
Lord, You are more beautiful than diamonds,
And nothing I desire compares with You.

Copyright 1982 Integrity Hosanna! Music, credited to Lynn De Shazo.

No age. That was always my favorite part of the Church of England hymnal, how old the hymn writers were. I used to think writing hymns was a guarantee of living to be old, until I realized that probably only people already old felt the urge to write them. That's probably no longer true.

Something else new to me in both this hymnal and the one in the seats with full music was a complete guide to the hymns by topic or theme, as well as an alphabetical index.

I had difficulty finding my place. There were the usual hymn-number-posting racks at the front of the room (what do you call those?), but they weren't in use. I'd be browsing through the hymnal index when Bob would announce the next hymn number, I'd miss it, and not be able to find it. Barbara and Bob were sort of making this up as they went along.

"Roger gave us some homework," Barbara announced, and several members read from the bibles supplied at every seat. Acts, Letter of Peter, John.

There were announcements. As Barbara called out events, members from their seats would fill in the details. March for Jesus, May 22, Academy Green, Kingston. Kid's fair. A call for people to join a class. Other members simply spoke from their seat, asking questions. Very informal.

At 10:45 teachers and children were dismissed for Sunday School, leaving ten of us. Barbara led us in silent and participatory prayer. People spoke in conversational voices of friends and church members who were going through medical emergencies. One person led us in a real prayer. In the silences we could hear the children talking through the stud and wallboard wall separating us. Near me I heard someone writing through the whole prayer period. Good heavens, I thought. There's another reporter here making notes. But when I looked around it was a young child, quietly scribling on a piece of paper, having just sat silently through half an hour of a church service. He soon got a little noisier, and the mother took him out.

Then Barbara began her sermon.

She spoke to us in a normal voice, person to person, about her life and her experience, what her religion meant to her, and about what she felt she still needed to know. She led us through her researches that week, into the ten commandments, for example, and her efforts to come to terms with them. It was just the best sermon I ever heard. At the end Bob held up a piece of paper facing her, and she said, "9 1/2! He's giving me 9 1/2 like the Olympics." Well done, Bob.

After the service Bob invited me to join the others for a donut and coffee, gave me a chance to find out more about my local church. Up to just a few decades ago, it had been Quaker, with a silent service of an hour or two. But the world broke in, children couldn't sit in silence for so long. So local churchpeople came to predominate, and the Quakers left. Just this year the congregation has officially changed the organization from Quaker to independent. "But what denomination are you?" They shrugged. It's their church, they own it, they run it the way they want. Those chairs and that table at the front of the church, that I thought symbolic, one member found in the church attic and liked, she reupholstered them and put them at the front of the church because they looked nice. This is a congregation in complete charge of their own worship. If the building vanished one night, they'd have no difficulty meeting in a tent. Or just outdoors.

Roger, their minister, however, came from a Methodist church before, so I'm going to think of them as Methodist. That has some romance in Britain where I come from, having started as an eighteenth century rural ecstatic sect.

Recently, I was told, this little community got 300 people together to go round cleaning and beautifying Tillson. They do good works in the community, without respect to belief or denomination, they said. Barbara is an ex-catholic. Altogether I got the impression of a community living the Christian life in front of each other without any embarassment or unease, and free to choose whatever traditions or non-traditions they felt made sense to them.

I found it a very good experience. I had not one boring moment. I was given a great welcome but not hounded to join. I think in this day and age it would be hard to get a more exemplary church experience. The only fault I have to find is that everyone sat in the back rows, making it impossible for strangers like me to slip in and sit at the back, and be able to slip out undetected if I felt uncomfortable.

If you're a non-church goer but decide to visit churches like this to sample what's going on, I suggest putting in the plate roughly what you'd pay for a movie. At Tillson Community Church dress is casual, so don't go formal. Otherwise I don't think there are any decisions to make. I close my eyes during prayer, pretend to read or sing along during hymns (actually I often improvise a bass line). Not much is asked of you.

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