I was chatting with my lunchtime pray-ers today about the endeavours of some to re-establish a church prayer meeting, which is looking like it might happen, if at all, either in an evening or on a Saturday morning.  None of them would go to either meeting - some are very old and don't go out after dark, for others Saturday is either shopping or family time.  I asked about lunch times - and they were enthusiastic - they like the half hour of stillness followed by food that we share 10 times a year.  So, foolishly, I have just emailed my deacons to suggest we add another 12 lunchtime prayer meetings a year, one a month, and offering to host alternate months.  Maybe the butternut squash and pumpkin soup has gone to my head, but in an older congregation where loneliness is a real issue and where people living alone may opt for a slice of toast rather than a proper meal, it seems that twin needs of pastoral care and spiritual nurture can be successfully blended without the poor old minister needing yet another evening out.

We will see what happens.  Unless other people are willing to host six out of the twelve meetings, I won't pursue it.  But it has promise, I feel.

Sometimes, in my more cynical moments, I think that English Baptists understand this as 'rehearse this by having a Sunday roast at home.'   Whilst I have a few friends who do indeed practice hospitality, who do welcome strangers, who do feed people who are hungry and who do embrace people who are lonely, they are the exception rather than the rule.

For four years I have tried to model something of practising hospitality - having open house, feeding those happened to be around at meal times, and most specifically by providing space to pray and eat in Lent and Advent.  Because of the nature of my congregation, this has meant making endless pots of homemade soup - early on it was made very clear to me that this was no great ask (even though at church events we got watered down packet soup).  Whilst at times it has felt a chore, my trusty slow cookers have ensured there was always piping hot broth on offer - usally some weird concoction I invented from what was in the cupboard.  We've had some lovely times together and with the money raised supported among others Christian Aid, TLM, HMF, BMS and one time we bought a water pump for an African village.

Something has finally clicked somewhere... on Sunday someone gave me a cake for today's lunchtime Advent group (yes I know we're early, it's all to do with how the Tuesdays land this year) and yesterday someone rang to offer to make some soup or a stew for another week.

Practice hospitality... cast your bread upon the waters, and after many days it will return as buttered toast - as a woman at a bus stop once said to my mother.

Last week the lights in the manse living room went 'phutt' fairly spectacularly, blowing all the bulbs at once.  On Thursday a nice man installed a new switch in the livining room - the lights that had been dim and flickery for four years (to my knowledge) suddenly beamed brightly.  This morning he returned to replace the defunct striplight in the kitchen - the state of the wiring was scary but we made a good team and now, after two hours I have a shiny new light that works - so well I can now see to wash up, rats.

The minister who lived in darkness has seen great light, on she who dwelled in the land of darkness light has dawned... with apologies to Isaiah of course.  I think what struck me was that you don't recognise dinginess or darkness until it's displaced by light; that and you don't appreciate even flawed light until it fails.  Wonder what that might say about faith or mission...?

Yesterday we had a visiting preacher, someone exploring a call to ordained ministry who needs some preaching experience, who has never, as yet, taken a full service and who baulked at the idea of doing so for us (this time... when she comes back she will).  Listening to her speak, watching her anxiety and earnest endeavours took me back a long way!  It would be easy to find fault with her sermon, it had all the classic beginners' features - too many ideas, too many out of context quotations from other parts of the Bible, too many metaphors (dogs, vines, rosebushes, tomatoes...) but what she offered was carefully and prayerfully delivered.  I almost envied her the simple, assured message she brought, but only almost, I don't regret the challenges and questions I've faced since studying theology which have given me a deeper, more reflective faith.  I also recalled the naivety of that exploration phase - just as well I didn't know I'd end up doing what I'm doing, which is a world away from the occasional Sunday preach...  This lady has a long journey ahead of her, and is probably in for some surprises along the way, but I wish her well as she seeks to offer her life in the service of Christ's church.

In the evening I was preaching for the Penties.  Having been involved in the civic switching on of lights events the day before, they were all very tired, but as ever very gracious and accepted what I had to say (although there was some dispute over whether Jesus was more likely to have been born in Spring or Autumn - check the web you can argue either or both!)  What struck me was how little they understand scriptures they think they know.  In my overview of Advent, one of my readings was Malachi 3: 1 - 4.  I asked them who they thought it referred to.... 'Jesus' came the answer (thinks... jokes about penguins etc) when to me it was self evident that the Christian answer (and the Matthean one too) would by John the Baptist.  The idea that it also had a meaning, and referrent, in its own time seemed to pass people by.  I'm certainly not knocking them, they are good, hardworking, sincere people; I just wonder if all the note taking they do in sermons actually helps or hinders.

I quite like the 'hit and run' nature of visiting preaching, and find it a very different experience from the regular Sunday by Sunday, but I have to admit that, for all its frustrations, the regular week by week speaking into the lives of a congregation and individuals what I believe God wants them to hear is more rewarding - even if you get fewer compliments and more brickbats!

Slowly, Mr Amazon is sending me a whole heap of books I ordered in the last month or two.  Yesterday I received The Implied Reader by Wolfgang Iser, Baltimore, John Hopkins Press, 1974.  Whether it will prove worth the expense remains to be seen, but a couple of the essays look promising.  Anyway, the introduction says this...

The history of the novel as a 'genre' began in the eighteenth centruy, at a time when people had become preoccupied with their own everyday lives.  Like no other art form before it, the novel was concerned directly with social and hisotrical norms that applied to a particular environment, and so established an immediate link with the empirical reality familiar with its readers.  While other ltierary forms induced the reader to contemplate the exemplariness they embodied, the novel confronted him with problems arising from his own surroundings, at the same itme holding our vairious potential solutions which the reader himself had, at least partially, to formulate.  What was presented in the novel led to a specific effect: namely, to involve the reader in the world of the novel and so to help him to understand it - and ultimately his own world - more clearly.

Page xi, emphasis mine.

Whether this might be said of some of the pulp fiction that fills our bookshops these days is an interesting postulate, but I am more immediately intrigued by the last sentence and its obvious parallel which reading both history and scripture.  To what extent does reading them involve us in the world they describe, and how does this help us to understand our world more clearly?  To what extent does reading, say the gospel according to Matthew or the letter to the church in Corinth involve me infirst centruy Christian culture?  I may come to read it expecting it to speak to me but is it as Iser suggests?  Or what of history?  Do I enter into, in some way, seventeenth centruy Baptist life, or is it more the world of the implied author somewhere in the twentieth century?  Yes, I want to make the case that this reading will 'help me to understand my own world more clearly,' to paraphrase Iser, but is this the intention of the writer?  I'm not so sure that it necessarily is.