“Enlarge the place of your tent,
And let them stretch out the curtains of your dwellings;
Do not spare;
Lengthen your cords,
And strengthen your stakes…”
Rev. S. J. de S.
Weerasinghe quoted from Isaiah 54:2 and 3 at the end of the 1988 historical
record of the Cinnamon Gardens Baptist Church.
“The challenge of community outreach, the impulsion of our
cultural heritage and the vision of an ecumenical perspective. As I see it,
these are the directions in which our immediate future should be deeply
involved, with firm resolve and purposeful action” were the final words he
penned in to the document.
The Cinnamon
Gardens Baptist Church turns 200 years old this month. It stands at the busiest
intersection in Colombo, one that has been transformed dramatically over the
years. And at the turning of the century, it is a reflection of this
metamorphosis, expanding and growing into a truly “local” church.
The ‘Elite’ Church
Rev. James Chater,
Sri Lanka’s first Baptist missionary, arrived on the island with his wife,
Anne, and four children, in 1812. His 1813 sermon “in a warehouse somewhere in
the Pettah,” marked the beginning of the Baptist Church in Sri Lanka.
Original
membership, according the church history, was “made up entirely of Europeans
and Burghers”. Many of its early pastors were simply Baptist missionaries with
plans to move inland once they had a working knowledge of the people and
language of Sri Lanka. So the church rarely had the same pastor for longer than
a few years at a time.
Despite this
situation the congregation was strengthened in its convictions and grew in
number and commitment, starting prayer meetings and bible studies and even
subscribing to build “a proper place of worship”.
It took a quarter
of a century for that place to materialize, but in 1875, a plot of land was
bought in Cinnamon Gardens for Rs. 4,181. A foundation stone was laid on April
4, 1876 and the church of Rev. F. D.
Waldock’s design was built by 1877 at the expense of Rs. 22,126.
A Sinhala church that
met separately in the Pettah warehouse in the 1870s was also invited to move
its meetings to the Cinnamon Gardens premises. But the English church continued
to be a colonial endeavor until 1874, when Mr. P. D. De Silva, the first
Sinhala name to appear on the church records, was elected deacon.
In 1874 the
congregation also became independent of the Baptist Missionary Society. So in
1875, the then Open Communion Baptist Church became the Cinnamon Gardens
Baptist Church, celebrating both the independence and the physical move.
Becoming the ‘Roundabout’ Church
When they first
bought the property, the Cinnamon Gardens locality was highly residential, described
in the church history as a “leafy solitude”. But the bustle of the Pettah quickly
followed the congregation to the intersection at the Lipton circus.
During the Second
World War, the church neighborhood was a hub of activity. The presence of foreign
armed forces gave the church plenty of opportunity to “exercise Christian
hospitality”. And in return, as the record goes:
“These young forces personnel flooded our church, took the [youth
movement] by storm and almost ran it, swelled our choir and occupied our
pulpit.”
So much so that once the forces left,
the church fell into a “lull”. But this “lull” brought other good news.
The 1898 history records an “attempt
to unite the Sinhala/Tamil and English congregations,” in order to get away
from the elitist label it had gained over the years. Although this attempt didn’t
bear immediate fruit, there was gradual change. Half a century later, it was
obvious that the membership had become “less exclusive than it was once, and …
a much truer cross section of the educated population of Ceylon”.
The metamorphosis boomed in the late
1950s. Rev. Sutton Smith revived evangelism with open-air programs and creative
presentations of the gospel even in rural areas and prisons. He also strengthened
inclusiveness by turning the separate Sinhala/Tamil and English churches into
one church with two congregations in 1961. In 1963, he concluded the 150th
anniversary history with strong words:
“The fact is that we are faced today with a daunting task,
and we are not sufficient for it … May God make us a people of prayer, a
dedicated people, willing to be used, people strong enough in the Spirit to
take the opportunity that lies outside our Church doors."
Nihal Perera, one of the oldest and
most senior members of the current congregation remembers Sutton Smith’s time,
and sees the transformation the church has gone through, since:
“This church is primarily for the
Sinhala and Tamil speaking roundabout community … In my youth, all the members
came from far away. Now, the members and leaders in the Tamil/Sinhala
congregation originally came from the nearby tenements.”
A significant event in this transformation
took place in the 1980s when the Sunday school doors were opened to all
children in the neighborhood.
“It was supposed to
be the bourgeois Colombo 07 area” Perera says, “and we were also tagged as a Colombo
07 church. But from that time we tried hard to break through that and say we
are for the people in the area.”
As Perera remembers it, the church
“tried to be indigenous. We introduced Sinhala singing and songwriting, used
the magul bere and the thabla, and had our plays in Sinhala and
Tamil. When all these people were calling us a Colombo 7 church, we were having
avurudu celebrations!”
The ‘Purpose-Driven’ Church
On February 20, 1988, the Cinnamon
Gardens Baptist Church took another solid step towards becoming a truly local
body. Rev. Kingsley Perera was ordained and became the first national pastor of
the church.
Rev. Perera was Assistant Commissioner
at the Department of Probation and Child Care Services until 1987 and his
interest in social work continued to influence his pastoral work. Through his
initiative, in 1992 the church opened the Dev Piya Sevana, where they housed
many of their already well-established outreach programs including a cafeteria
and counseling services. This further helped the church to reach out, as
Sutton-Smith envisioned, outside its doors.
But the most recent and tangible
change came about in the lead up to the Easter of 2007. Under the guidance of
current pastor Rev. Gary Dean, the church body took on the ‘Forty Days of
Purpose’ study by Rick Warren.
“I don’t know how folks knew about
it,” Rev. Dean muses. But the impact was tangible. “It was a powerful time.”
Nearly 80 percent of the congregation
was involved in a study group during the period. This led to greater
involvement of the membership in all areas of church activity, and a radical
restructuring of its organization and constitution.
Rev. Kingsley Perera, now in his
retirement, looks at the current congregation and is encouraged.
“There has been tremendous
growth in the church, both physically and spiritually,” he says.
And as far as one may see and hear, the congregation at
the Colombo 7 roundabout has grown as Rev. Weerasinghe envisioned, steadily,
over two centuries, into a truly purpose driven church.
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