Today we have an afternoon invitation service, being organised by 'the Gang of Four' - a group which formed at one of our Vision Days last year to look at the 'community engagement' side of our life and who did our B2C service last autumn.  It was their idea to have regular invitation services and it is a delight to sit back and let them get on with it - albeit that I have to blag the five minute address at the end.

So, this morning I've been writing reports for the AGM next month - for "Thing in a Pub", for "Saturday Prayers" and for "Lent 'n' Advent".  As I have done so, I've been very conscious of how different is the 'feel' of these groups from the church I came to a little over five years ago.  Gone is the religious language to be replaced by something more real yet more innately spiritual; gone are the lists of of 'they who must be named lest they take umbrage and leave' (though there are still a few they aren't in the groups I report on!) to be replaced by words like 'laughter,' 'warmth,' 'friendship' and 'openness.'

More generally, gone are the reports from all but two of the organisations in place when I arrived: the knitting group left en bloc when the building closed; the children's work closed when there were no leaders (mid-week) and no children (Sundays).  The oddly named men's social committee (whose purpose I never discerned) vanished like morning mist, the walking group reached journey's end and the singers sang their swansong.  Now we have reports on the lunch club, the pub group, the prayer groups and the last surviving Bible class.  It is, I realise , not the church to which I came!

This reflection seems good - whilst some of the changes sadden me, and their longer term implications are worrying, on the whole we are in better shape now than then.  Numerically smaller, older, frailer, financially more precarious true; but more open, more gentle and gracious, more forgiving, more risk-taking too.

I am sure I've changed a lot too.  I am in some senses less anxious and in others more so.  I have a proven track record for mission and ministry, for risk-taking and tough-challenge facing.  I feel I am less 'holy' and more able to be surprised that God still confirms/affirms me in unexpected ways.  I know so much more that I now know I know so much less than I thought I knew.  Now I am five-and-a-bit - a big, grown up minister person who is out of the 'drop out danger zone' of experience - I wonder what I'll be like by the time I'm ten!!!