Sunday was our harvest thanksgiving service, and as part of the 'front end' I asked people what they knew about the work of Glasgow City Mission.  Even allowing for the fact that people are shy and reluctant to risk looking daft if the answer is factually incorrect, it struck me, quite forcibly, that I had probably assumed a far greater degree of knowledge than existed.  I didn't expect people to know everything the charity does but I assumed they would have an idea why we support tham at harvest.  Maybe they do, and were just not given the right opportunity to share.

A large chunk of my sermon was didactic - historical backgrounds to BMS and Operation Agri work in Sri Lanka and historical background on Glasgow City Mission.  It's not my 'normal' style of sermon, because it isn't exactly 'preaching' but it did strike me that maybe there is a greater place for 'didache' alongside 'kerygma' in adult worship than I tend to assume.  Way back I wrote an essay on kerygma and didache in child faith development, noting that what we offer children often tends to be 'learning about faith' rather than 'growing, or learning how to express, nascent faith'.  Maybe with adults I tend too far the other way.

Either way, I learned a lot about holy tenacity from reading the accounts of the pioneers who began work in Glasgow and Colombo, and more grist to the mill for my exploration of 'hope' that will weave through all of November.