Today is our church AGM - not the most thrilling of events, it has to be said, but probably one of the least understood.

It has a legal function - as a charity we have to approve our audited accounts and elect our office bearers and trustees for the next period (some annual, some tri-annual)

It has a Baptist-history function - we prepare written reports about the past year that form part of our archive and will, one day, allow people to understand how we tried to follow Jesus in this place at this time.

It has a forward facing function - it marks the start of another new year and another opportunity to try to get it right in our disicpleship!  Just a couple of weeks after our covenant service we begin to work again.

It has a fellowship function - yes, we have lunch between the end of worship and the start of the meeting, but we also have an opporutity to listen to one another more lcosely and communally.

The AGM itself is a very short meeting.  A lot of churhces merge it into a routine meeting and lose the distinctives.  Today we are having a very short AGM after which we have a 'normal' church meeting.  This is important, given the legal function of the AGM and that there are matters we would wish to discuss which are not of releavnce to OSCR (or Charity Commission further south).  I know this an example of my 'anal' tendencies but the two meetings model makes more sense, so that's what I've unanimously decided we will do!  How un-Baptist is that?!

Hopefully we'll have some new students along today, and hopefully some of them will like us enough to come back.  Hopefully we'll have a useful meeting - though next year I won't let anyone ask for the date to be changed and then go on holiday the day they asked for!!  You know who you are and I'm still waiting for you to hand in your handwritten copy of Psalm 119 as puinishment...! ;-)

Have a good Sunday wherever you are, whatever you're doing..