At a large meeting at Westminster Chapel last Thursday, the members of the Church decided to invite the Rev. Sidney M. Berry, M.A., of Carrs Lane Chapel, Birmingham, to succeed Dr. Jowett, who has intimated his willingness, should the invitation be accepted, to take one service each Sunday during four months of the year.
Mr. Berry is a son of the late Dr. Charles Berry, of Wolverhampton, who with Hugh Price Hughes and other leaders of Nonconformity a quarter of a century ago counted for so much in Free Church and national life. Mr. Sidney Berry is 41 years of age and was educated at Tettenhall College, in Staffordshire, Clare College, Cambridge, and Mansfield College, Oxford. His first ministries were at Oxted and Limpsfield, in Surrey, from 1906 to 1909, and at Chorlton-cum-Hardy, Manchester, from 1909 to 1912. Since then has has been minister of Carrs Lane, where he succeeded Dr. Jowett. It will be an interesting coincidence if he succeeds the Doctor at Westminster also.
In many respects Mr. Berry will be a contrast to Dr. Jowett but a man who has gripped Birmingham as will not fail to make a great impression upon Westminster, and others than Congregationalists will be fortunate if Mr. Berry accepts the invitation now given to him.
Something new in Nonconformity will be attempted if the proposal that Mr. Berry should be pastor of Westminster Chapel, and that Dr. Jowett, its late pastor, should preach there during four months in the year is carried out. It will mean that Dr. Jowett will be canon of Westminster Chapel. And why not? It is clear that he cannot stand the strain of an ordinary pastorate - and he is not the first great preacher in the Free Churches who has suffered from the same disability. What then? Surely such voices should not be lost to our pulpits, especially in these days. Hitherto though we boast of our Freechurchism we have been so little free that we have failed to break through our accustomed usages as to pastorates, to make a definite place for men who cannot do the work of the pastorate but are great preachers. With Mr. Berry as his colleague, Dr. Jowett's canonry at Westminster Chapel would be sure to be a great success. Let us hope that it's success will encourage other adventures of the same kind, until we actually have canonries in the Free Churches. Wesley's Chapel, City Road, is another centre where a like experiment ought to be tried.
From the United Methodist
The Weekly Journal of the United Methodists Church,
Thursday, June 22, 1922.