New ways to congregate at Blackwood’s chapel

IN the little town of Blackwood a quiet revolution has been happening at the local chapel.

Where St Martin’s Chapel once hosted traditional Uniting Church services, today it’s increasingly finding new ways to cater for the same human needs for connection in a changed world.

The program on offer includes meditative art and sound healing, Landcare meetings and workshops, refugee support gatherings, quiz nights, live music, and very popular murder mystery nights to name just a bit of what’s going down at the chapel that still sits under the Uniting Church umbrella.

Uniting Church lay preacher and St Martins Chapel committee member Robyn Zanon said the program fits with the chapel’s participation in a wider dedicated program that aims to ensure the church remains relevant in today’s society.

“The chapel is part of the Village Church Network and part of that is the Wayfarer Collective which is looking at new ways of being a church in the 21st century,” Zanon said.

It seems to be working as the lively and popular program on the dedicated St Martins Chapel website reveals.

Coming up ahead the program includes next month’s Great Blackwood Green Tomato Chutney Off, new Zen Tangle meditative art sessions, the launch of storm documentary Windfall, a rescheduled Show Tunes Quiz Night and a murder mystery evening set in Egypt.

“We run movies using our cinema quality projector and we often try to get new releases every couple of months,” Zanon said.

“We also have meditative worship services. at least two a year, and a number of arts shows.”

The chapel underwent extensive renovation a few years back, and building on this a freshly completed upgrade brings the kitchen up to registered standards, enhancing its ability to host all manner of community events from wakes to weddings.

“People can ring me and say ‘it’s my child’s birthday today and it looks like rain. Can we book the chapel?’,” Zanon said. “A few weeks ago we had Tony McManus, the world renowned musician performing here. The musicians who perform here say the acoustics are fantastic and that’s due to the shape of the ceiling which is like a reversed arc.”

While Zanon leads Uniting Church services in Ballan and Bacchus Marsh, she said the program at St Martins is responding to where the demand exists.

“The community have embraced it,” she said.

Underscoring it all are the same essential values for which the chapel was built way back in 1896.

“The reason it’s called St Martin’s is because St Martin shared his cloak with a beggar and, likewise, we want to share what we have with the community.”