THE Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, asked us to say the Lord’s Prayer, in our own language. Welsh mingled with English, Chichewa, Arabic and other tongues from Africa and Asia, a example of people literally speaking in tongues.

We were at a service to dedicate the new offices of the Anglican Communion. Everyone knows that the Anglican Church is shrinking, but even to me it seemed a mite ambitious to try to squeeze the leading archbishops, chaplains and other luminaries into one small Victorian chapel in North London. Paul Handley, Editor of the Church Times, was among those forced to listen to the service from outside the church door.

The service was not merely a mêlée of tongues but also of liturgies and ideologies. Dr Williams, resplendent in a gold mitre, was shrouded throughout in clouds of incense in a service both long and high. The presiding bishop of the US Episcopal Church, the Most Rev Frank Griswold, who led the ordination of the openly gay Bishop Gene Robinson which is threatening to split the Church, was robed in plain suit and cassock shirt to cense the Gospel before reading it. In the congregation was Archbishop Bernard Malango, Primate of the province of Central Africa and one of those most opposed to Bishop Robinson’s elevation. “A split is inevitable,” he told me afterwards.

The split over gays is roughly defined as one between North and South. The warring factions can share Communion, it seems, but not much else. Some can not even bring themselves to share Communion. The week-long committee meeting that preceded this service was boycotted by the Primate of Nigeria, Dr Peter Akinola, because of the presence of Bishop Griswold.

Perhaps these seemingly irreconcilable divisions point to one reason why the Anglican Communion has moved its HQ from a grim, inhospitable set of offices in Waterloo to the home of a community of nuns in North London, known for their work in healing.

The community of St Andrew was founded as a community of deaconesses within the Church of England in 1862 in King’s Cross. Ten years later they moved to Westbourne Park and this chapel was built and dedicated five years later. The community has shrunk to eight, of whom five are active: most of their 30 bedrooms have become redundant. Mother Lillian, the Mother Superior, who read the epistle, explained: “This was our mother house but we have handed it over to the Anglican Communion.”

Mother Lillian continued: “We felt we did not want to pass it to the commercial market. We wanted it to be continued to be used for the promotion of the Gospel. We were founded to serve the Church in parochial and institutional pastoral situations, children’s homes, residential care for the elderly and convalescent homes. We work in university and hospital chaplaincies in London. We are very centred on Anglicanism, engaged in mission and the promotion of women’s ministry in the Church.”

She is realistic about the difficulties facing her Church. “I have hope for the future but in different forms. We are caught up in a global situation. The Church will always need small powerhouses of prayer in the challenges that face it at the moment. That’s what this place is: a small powerhouse of prayer.”

A five-star guide

EVENT: Dedication of the new offices of the Anglican Communion, Westbourne Park, northwest London

CELEBRANT: The Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams

ARCHITECTURE: Tiny Victorian chapel from 1887 with even tinier windows. Would have been cosy had it not been so cold. Church incorporated within warm and friendly new offices of the Anglican Communion

SERMON: The Right Rev John Paterson, Primate of New Zealand, spoke of Jesus’s disciple Andrew and how little affected he seemed by envy for his brother Peter

MUSIC: Played in by the Cranford String Ensemble with the choir of St John’s Wood parish leading the music of the service

LITURGY: After the service, the Archbishop toured the offices, blessing each room. “Awake, O north wind, and come, O south wind! Blow upon my garden, let its fragrance be wafted abroad,” he said at the garden entrance

SPIRITUAL HIGH: Had feared beforehand this office move was a proverbial switching of the desk chairs on the Anglican Titanic. Nothing any Archbishop said changed my mind, but Mother Lillian, the mother of the religious community at the new office, did. Maybe a few prayerful tips from wise elderly spiritual women is what the Anglican Church needs

AFTER-SERVICE CARE: Sausage rolls, ham sandwiches and tasty nibbles