Random Interview: Senior Pastor at St Peter’s Barge, Canary Wharf
By Kaf Blamire Sunday 3 October, 2010 19:22
Photo by Fiona Garden
A man with a beer can is singing “Maybe I’m because I’m a Londoner.” (sic) Canary Wharf’s distinctive skyline stands like a cold and intimidating monument to Capitalism and is perhaps the last place you might expect to find London’s only floating church. However, in the waters of West India Quays a haphazard illuminated cross shines across the water like a lonely and defiant beacon. It’s an undeniably brazen statement in such a sterile and corporate setting. I half expected to meet an ex-mariner or some sort of modern day half crazed pirate convert. In reality, Marcus Nodder, Senior Pastor at St Peter’s Barge, was a smartly dressed family man, completely focused on his beliefs and as uncompromising as the world around him. As the Sunday drizzle hit the windows of the front cabin, I spoke with him as he fed his young son Nelson his evening meal.
SNIPE: What is the history of the barge?
marcus: The Barge has been here since 2003. The first reason it’s here is to tell people who work in Canary Wharf about Jesus. There are 93,000 people who work in Canary Wharf, there is no church building. All there is, is a multi-faith prayer room and so the barge was a solution to that problem, this was an initiative of various local churches who got together and came up with this creative solution of a floating church. Both my parents were committed Christians but I may have been in my early teens when I took the step myself, exactly when I was born again into a new life spiritually, I’m not too sure, I’ll find that out on the other side. It may have been when I was 6 or 7 but maybe consciously when I was 12 or 13.
S: I suppose it must be impossible to find a building in this area, being already so built up and expensive…
M: It’s prohibitive, just the costs round here, all you have is office space and to rent that would cost and arm and a leg, so the boat is actually the best solution, the cheapest solution. We run lunchtime services throughout the week for the business community, Wednesday and Thursday we have a service at which we teach the Bible and the idea is that Christians come along who work in the Wharf to hear the Bible readings and they can bring their non-Chrisitan colleagues along to hear it in a non pressured environment.
S: Are they very popular these services?
M: We get about 60 or 70 that come in the middle of the week, so it’s not big numbers when you think there are 93,000 people who work in the Wharf, but it’s a start.
S: I can see the boat has practical purpose, but there is quite a lot of biblical reference and significance to boats and water, is that part of the thinking behind it? So many Bible stories relate to water.
M: That’s not a reason, but you’re right there are lots of parallels, all the way through from Noah and his ark in the flood, in Genesis, right through to Jesus teaching from a boat, through to him saying he would make us disciples and fishers of men, and in fact there was a cartoon about the barge in the Times, with the caption “fishers of city men”. It’s men in pin stripe suits swimming up like fish towards a cross being dangled in the water.
S: Do you think countering materialism is your main challenge here?
M: I don’t think it’s anymore of a challenge than anywhere, as I was touching on in the sermon today, there is this veil over people’s hearts whether they work in banking or whatever job they do, so it’s a problem common to everyone that we are spiritually blind and we need God to open our eyes. I don’t think its any harder for people here, I think the temptations are the same, the spiritual problems are the same, I think the one issue we face here is that people are so pressured time wise, so that’s just a very practical, logistical problem, people don’t have much time
S: Do you think there is a friction between working in a job where you earn an immense amount of money, possibly leading to more temptations, and being a Christian?
M: I don’t think Biblically there is any problem with earning a lot of money, what the Bible condemns is the love of money, so I don’t think God is concerned with what your salary is, he is concerned with what you do with your salary, so there’s nothing wrong with having a high income, but if you have a high income you have to be generous and use your money in a godly way. Having said that Jesus does say that it’s hard for the rich to enter the Kingdom of Heaven, obviously people who work in the Wharf are wealthy, by and large, I mean we all are, relatively, compared to other people in the world. I think the problem with wealth is that it can be something we put our trust in as a false God – that we trust in it to give us meaning, security and purpose in our lives. I think money for people who work in the Wharf is certainly a potential idol. That doesn’t mean the people who work in the Wharf are worse than anyone else, it just means their idols might be different.
S: Do you think people immerse themselves in material things because they are fearful of death, in some ways trying to distract themselves?
M: Absolutely, people just don’t want to talk about death, it’s a taboo subject. People don’t want to face up to the fact that they are going to die and what happens then. People just think it doesn’t matter that they’ll cross that bridge when they come to it, but eternity is a very long time. [I jump as flute and keyboard music signaling the start of the next service suddenly comes blaring through the speaker in the room, Marcus turns it off]
S: Fear and love are kind of opposites though aren’t they?.. but in Christianity they kind of collide these notions of fear of death and the need for love, Do you not think that it is strange to use fear as a motivation for belief in something proclaiming to be based in love?
M: Well, there are all sorts of ways people come to Christ, yes it is fear, fear of death, fear of what’s to come. For other people what strikes them primarily is the love of God for them in Christ, the thought that he died for them, and both are true, people are afraid of dying and afraid of judgment – and you should be, because it’s real, if your not admitting it to yourself you are putting your head in the sand. [Nelson has finished eating his food]
S: Nelson is quite a maritime name for your son..
M: Yes hmm, another parallel.. but that wasn’t a reason for it..
