Cross Street Chapel, Unitarian

A great space for small events and even larger scale ones. Staff are friendly!

Excellent venue for City centre meetings, concerts, conferences, etc.Home for liberal religious people in Manchester.If your questions about life, the universe, etc, are troubling the people around you, Cross Street Chapel is for you as a community that encourages living in the questions.

Its a wonderful venue where we held a wonderful World Mental Health Day. Awesome acoustics for Singing too. 100% recommended as a great venue.

Whent to a meeting there felt warm and safe place to hold meeting

Lovely building in the heart of Manchester city center. The people involved in running the place are a bunch of snobs though, the congregation is small, and many of the congregation are quite unfriendly or odd. Ultimately not recommended by myself though others seem to like it. It should be noted however that a sizeable amount of people come here just the once and never return.

Regular free concerts here often by students from RNCM. Lovely place to hear music and very friendly. Also held and been to lots of meetings in the main hall which had very reasonable rates.

Affordable, ample and great meetings rooms to hire. A gem.

Amazingly welcoming place for worship, meetings, workshops and more. Extremely high quality programme of free lunchtime recitals too. Everyone in Greater Manchester needs to know about Cross Street Chapel!

My wife and I attended this chapel a handful of times a few months ago. Technically, I'm a Catholic and my wife is an Anglican, so we are more used to formalised services. Unitarians are very flexible in their beliefs. I imagine holding open doubts about the existance of God, and/or the lack of divinity of Jesus, is very doable within a Unitarian congregation. I should say they are sort of Christians. I detected a vibe online and offline, of pride in being a Unitarian? Unfortunately, the music in this particular chapel was unbalancing. I felt their services of worship, were almost equally, *piano recitals* in which we were led into having to clap the musician. My Catholic background, and my wife's Anglican background, made this aspect feel very uncomfortable indeed, as I am sure people with similar experiences to ours can relate. The overall format, presumably designed by the reverend, is nice though, and unlike some churches or chapels, of different denominations, they didn't want to gang up on us, to ask us when we would be back, or what our occupations were, to judge how useful we might be to them. You might have had that type of religious" experience/scenario yourself?"

What was the name of the service?It was the 10:45am service on the 12th March. The service was in honour of the recent International Women’s Day. Three Mystery Worshippers were in attendance.How full was the building?About 25% of the seats were filled. I counted 13 people, other than us.Did anyone welcome you personally?Yes, we got a “Good morning” as we walked in.Was your pew comfortable?Yes x3.How would you describe the pre-service atmosphere?Quiet and peaceful, then a pianist played an introduction piece before the service started.What were the exact opening words of the service?“Even in a dark night, songs of beauty may be born.”What books did the congregation use during the service?“Sing your faith” and “Hymns for living”, as well as a service sheet.What musical instruments were played?A piano.Did anything distract you?No.Was the worship stiff-upper-lip, happy clappy, or what?Fairly stiff upper lip.Exactly how long was the sermon?There was no sermon this week, instead there were a selection of contributions from the women of the congregation in honour of International Women’s day. We base our scores on the average impression of these.On a scale of 1-10, how good was the preacher?We gave 3, 4 and 5.In a nutshell, what was the sermon about?Eco-feminism, social justice, Carol Ann Duffey’s poetry and animal rights.Which part of the service was like being in heaven?Two of were impressed when the lights went down and candles were lit. The third said he thought the pianist was fantastic. One of us enjoyed the after service conversation with the minister.And which part was like being in... er... the other place?Notable lack of anything overtly Christian - we didn’t do a lot of Christianity. There was not much mention of the divine and it felt very secular. None of us could remember the name ‘Jesus’ being mentioned once. One of us noted it was almost completely political, which was quite tiring.What happened when you hung around after the service looking lost?Several members, including the minister, talked with us.How would you describe the after-service coffee?Two of us had tea, and rated it very good. The coffee was average. They had chocolate biscuits!How would you feel about making another visit (where 10 = ecstatic, 0 = terminal)?0, 1, and 4. The lack of Christian content was the main negative.Did the service make you feel glad to be a Christian?Two “No’s” and “a little bit 50/50”.What one thing will you remember about all this in seven days' time ?The following answers were offered:“Highlighted what I’m not looking for.”“The importance of having a separate religious / spiritual space.”“The lack of Christianity”