Phew, it's the morning after the night before!  All the hours of planning, buying, making, and in my case coordinating and acting as the local 'United Nations' between chair shifters and room decorators, have paid off, we had a great event and attracted four times our normal congregation!

The Community Centre was transformed with a 'Christmas Eve house' scene, nativity artwork borrowed from local primary schools, some fairy lights and yards & yards of tinsel.  With fifteen minutes to spare, we finally got the data projector and laptop speaking to each other (the in-joke and answer to everything at the moment is 'F5').  It all went remarkably well.  I don't think any of us were to sure how it would 'feel' with a radio broadcast especially as this is such a visual age - hence the data projector to give something to look at!  But somehow it all worked, and people entered into the service and enjoyed it.

It was well worth the effort and engaged over half our membership in some apsect of the preparation and delivery.  Perhaps the proof of how it went was this morning's email from one deacon saying 'when's the next community service?"

There are lots of lessons to be learned from the experience, lots of minor issues to address (including my need for a blue hard hat!) but there was a real sense of joy in it all and that God is moving us on to new and exciting things.

Now then... back to putting away four extension leads, three sets of fairy lights, a bag or three of marshmallows and then a relaxing skinny fairtrade latte before I start on the Christingle talk!