We have been told to move.

Specifically, the Ministry of Defence is to conduct an emergency procedure based at Bank underground station here in the City of London, and this will mean that we shall not be able to get into St Michael's church for the Sunday service.

I've heard of rain stopped play, but this is a case of war stopped pray. Happily, I shall be able to ask the congregation to turn up at St Sepulchre's - our other church - instead.

If you live in London you soon get used to having your life disrupted. That derailment weeks ago at Chancery Lane station - the event all non-Londoners have forgotten about - means that the Central Line tube trains are still not running.

No doubt there is some purpose in the planned war game - some sort of simulated attack. But whether it's to be a rehearsal for a chemical, biological or even a nuclear attack, we have not yet been told. I suppose the location of this war game is logical enough, though it's mighty inconvenient for St Michael's folk. Our church is next to the Royal Exchange, Mansion House, the Bank of England and the Stock Exchange: each one of these institutions would make a juicy target for Saddam or Osama. No doubt it will be a tremendous song and dance and, when it's over, we shall be able to watch St Michael's going up in pretend smoke on the evening news.

Well, I hope it will only be pretend smoke. People in the City of London had to get used to the real thing not so long ago. For instance, on the night of December 28, 1940 there were 14,000 fires in the Square Mile, courtesy of Adolf Hitler's incendiary bombs. Much of the City was flattened, including many of Sir Christopher Wren's churches which were built following that other great fire of 1666. History does indeed offer us some savage repeats.

Being under fire brings out some powerful responses in people. There were the hundreds of firefighters - immortalised on the black and white cinema newsreels - carrying countless buckets of water to save St Paul's from the inferno.

Sunday's event will be only a game of course, but I like to think that, if we really did come under attack, we would cope as bravely as our grandparents did, night after night for months on end during the Blitz - or as courageously as the firefighters in New York on September 11. It's a strange thing about human nature: when things are merely doddling along in the daily routine, we torture ourselves with lurid anxieties about our blood pressure or whether our cholesterol level has gone off the Richter Scale; but when there's a genuine crisis we rise to the occasion.

Still, I can't help thinking that the Iraq crisis has been massively overblown in the news media. I doubt that even the Blitz got as much coverage. One thing for sure: if Saddam had poked his troublesome nose above the parapet in the days of Queen Victoria, we would have quietly sent a gunboat to see him off. And the whole event would have been just a couple of paragraphs at the bottom of page five. You know, I think it will be similar this time and, when it's quickly over, we'll wonder what all the fuss was about.

* Peter Mullen is Rector of St Michael's, Cornhill, in the City of London, and Chaplain to the Stock Exchange.