Every church I'd ever known had a car park (US=parking lot) until six years ago. It was inconceviable that a church would not. If the church didn't have on-property parking, the streets around it were free for parking. Australia; the land of free car parks, most of them long and thin.
The first church car park I remember was the unsealed one I spent all my childhood arriving in, running around in, waiting for my parents to stop talking in and finally driving a car into myself and parking it. This one even had it's own climbing tree - not that I did that in my "Sunday best"!
The second church I ever spent significant time in didn't have a car park, now that I think about it. But it had the next best thing. It had unregulated parking in all the streets surrounding it. We never hesitated to drive to church.
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| Our church in Sapporo with the car park out the front. |
The third church I became a member was a country church. It was just down the road from my house and I now shudder with disbelief as I recall driving such a short distance to church! There were a few placed on the property around the church to park, but again street parking was never a problem.Even a little church we worked in in Sapporo, northern Japan had a car park - for four cars. It seemed small until you had to shovel it in the winter time!
Then we moved to Tokyo and discovered a church that truly didn't have a car park. Nor did it have street parking. People walked, trained or rode to church. Unless, like us, they lived too far away and had a mob of little kids to transport to and from church. We drove to church every Sunday and paid about 400 yen to park our car in nearby paid parking. 500 yen if we talked a bit longer.
We are still at the same church and are grateful to live close enought to be saving 400 or 500 yen a week by riding to church. Here is where we park our bikes - behind the church in a free, but crowded double-level bike-park.
Have you ever ridden a bike to church? Some of my "Sunday best" isn't that great on a bike!
3 comments:
Sunday best doesn't go with motorbiking either, unless it's slacks/trousers/pants of some kind! I'm glad I don't have a car in Phnom Penh. Parking's a hassle, and even driving it takes longer to get most places in town by car than it does by moto.
We definitely get to church faster on our bikes than in a car. We can duck under the railway line on a bike track, for example. But even without the railway, over the shorter distances (under 4 km probably) bikes and cars are pretty equivalent in speed in Japan.
We only live 2km from church and usually take 2 cars because David goes much earlier for music practice. Ben sometimes asks if we can walk to church (relative to other places he knows it's quite close) but we would have to leave an hour earlier if we walked at his pace. Maybe when the kids are riding bikes we might be able to do that. I think if we were better at walking/riding places we could be a one car family.
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