St Mary's, Bryanston Square

St Mary's, Bryanston Square is a Church of England church dedicated to the Virgin Mary in Bryanston Square, London, just a five minute walk from any of Marylebone, Baker Street or Edgware Road tube stations. It is also the name of a related Church of England primary school.

It was built as one of the Commissioner's Churches in 1823-4 and was designed by Robert Smirke to seal the vista from the lower end of Bryanston Square. [Rhodri Liscombe, "Economy, Character and Durability: Specimen Designs for the Church Commissioners, 1818", Architectural History, Vol. 13. (1970), pp. 43-57+119-127] It is a brick building, with a stone portico and tower and listed grade I. [http://www.qpickard.co.uk/churches.htm]

Charles John Gardiner, 1st Earl of Blessington and Margaret Farmer married here on 16 February 1818. The church's rector c.1823 - 1847 was Thomas Frognall Dibdin, and Samuel Augustus Barnett was introduced to his future wife Henrietta during his curacy there 1867-8.

Current Church History

The church has grown to over 1400 people and the average age is somewhere around 26. The congregation began to meet in July 97 at St Paul's Onslow Square knowing that they would have to find a permanent home with the help of the church authorities. With the active support of the Bishop of London the church decided to come together with the existing congregation of St Mary's in Marylebone.

Core Beliefs of St Mary's

Church belongs to God

St Mary's church believes that God must be allowed to do with his church what he wills. God caused the church to come into being through unusual circumstances, he's protected them and he has caused them to grow. The church seeks to follow God's direction as he works through them.

Church belongs to the people of God

St Mary's church aims to establish a community life which diverse people can own and where everyone can play. The church has come to believe that some people are motivated above all else by such values as risk-taking, impact-making and stimulation and the church calls them 'adventurers'. Others are more motivated by relationship, friendship and acceptance and the church calls them 'carers' and there are those who value integrity, honesty and authenticity and the church refers to them as 'truth-tellers'. St Mary's believes that people reflect these important drives or motivations in different balances and although the congregation is meant to grow up into mature expressions of the lot, St Mary's church tend to identify more readily with two out of the three sets of values. The church believes these drives reflect real differences of temperament and that it is important to understand what motivates you because it is indicative of the kinds of gifts you have, the aspects of spirituality you will find easier and the kinds of people you will find more difficult. Generally, churches don't reflect all of these drives properly and tend to turn their distinctive visions into the drives with which the leader is most comfortable. Hence some churches are evangelistic and some are more pastoral etc.In the St Mary's view church is church. This means that the church must give full expression to adventuring gifts (apostolic and evangelistic), caring gifts (pastoral) and truth telling gifts (teaching and prophesy). None are optional. The absence of the right functioning of any one causes the church to remain immature. The church is immature but St Mary's is trying to grow up.

Church must be religion free

St Mary's church aim to do church in a religion free way on the theory that religion is the height of our rebellion against God. The church believes that the content of the Gospel should remain the same whilst the ways in which it is proclaimed, celebrated and lived out must change according to context. This has led the congregation to a radical attempt to lower or remove the boundaries of traditional church culture so that people who don't normally go to church or those who have been disaffected by their experience of church can find what we do to be as accessible as possible.

Notes