In one of those cringeworthy emails that circulate (I get at least two most days) came this which at least made me smile...

The strongman at a circus squeezed the juice from a lemon between his hands. He then said to the audience, "I will offer $200 to anyone in the audience who can squeeze another drop from this lemon.

A thin scholarly looking woman came forward, picked up the lemon, strained hard and managed to get a drop. The strongman was amazed. He paid the woman and asked, "What is the secret of your strength?"

"Practice," the woman answered. "I was the treasurer of a Church for thirty-two years!

 

And then this one I heard last week, which is a little more profound...

As of swimming pools, so of churches, all the noise and splashing comes from the shallow end.

Harvest thanksgiving a week on Sunday.  We are using the BMS Higher Ground pack as the basis for the service but have also someone coming to share with us her experience of working as a counsellor in Indonesia post tsunami.  I found talking to her entertaining as she's an ex-Pentecostal who speaks the language of Pentecostalism despite now being a Anglican most of the time!  (See, Philip Richter was right in what he said about denominational cultures!).  Now I am choosing songs - and not over inspired by the BMS suggestions or hymnbooks.

Ploughing fields and scattering good seed (not suggested) - well my people would love it but it doesn't really relate to our experience even in a semi-rural location.

So how's about this one for a change - well known in some circles already - which is a hymny type thing, utterly biblical and up to date: -

From the highest of heights to the depths of the sea
Creation's revealing Your majesty
From the colors of fall to the fragrance of spring
Every creature unique in the song that it sings
All exclaiming

Indescribable, uncontainable,
You placed the stars in the sky and You know them by name.
You are amazing God
All powerful, untamable,
Awestruck we fall to our knees as we humbly proclaim
You are amazing God

Who has told every lightning bolt where it should go
Or seen heavenly storehouses laden with snow
Who imagined the sun and gives source to its light
Yet conceals it to bring us the coolness of night
None can fathom

Indescribable, uncontainable,
You placed the stars in the sky and You know them by name
You are amazing God
All powerful, untamable,
Awestruck we fall to our knees as we humbly proclaim
You are amazing God
You are amazing God

 

Laura Storey and Jesses Reeves (c) sixsteps music/gleaning publications/EMI CMG

 

Not sure we'll manage to learn it (I know it already) but is a good starter for a service.

(My next challenge is to find a book it's published in as a legal download for single use costs about £2.50 - which I paid but gets pricey over time and several items)

I know I'm not the only person to post under this heading recently but I thought I might as well join in.

At our lunch club today I was handing out leaflets about our church to those who are not part of it,  One man asked me who these Baptists were, afterall, he asserted, I was Church of England (does Rowan Williams know this?!), and were they Christians?  I assured him we were! 

Apparently Christians have some nice hymns and songs, which he likes, and he thought our 'thing in the pub' sounded a good idea.  He is a curious fellow, one of those you find yourself feeling protective of, with mental health issues and no short term memory.  In recent months I've discovered that he was for a while part of a bowls team, has dabbled with landscape painting and has children who live not too far away.  I wonder whether 'thing in a pub' might be 'right' for him, and how he'd be received by others who come along - but it would be quite exciting if he did come along, even once.  Whether he might think we were Christians then, who knows?!

As the dust settles from this year's conference, and the cheques have been posted off around East Midlands for countersignature and settling of bills, we begin to start work on next year.

Firstly, where to go.  Our long established practice is a low cost centre, with really quite decent rooms, adequate (if unexciting) food, a bar and various seminar rooms.  The down side is sharing with the Mother's Union (every year so far, even if we change the dates!) the Free Church of England and other diverse groupings - a load of Methodists last year, I seem to recall.  Down, not because of who they are - we love them dearly, in so far as we know them - but because sometimes we could do with a place to ourselves.  We are looking at alternatives, recognising that the cost will probably sky rocket and the smaller/poorer churhces may struggle to meet their 'contribution' and/or ministers may choose not to come.  Tricky.

Then who to speak.  We are as disparate a group of ministers as you could wish for, but I think it is fair to say that we are Baptistly tolerant of each others heresies and foibles.  Being Christian and being Baptist does, for these few days anyway, take priority over left/right/high/low/sacrament/ordinance/green book/red book/OHP/guitar/organ/whatever issues.  Praise God!  So who might be suitable to speak is a good challenge.  We are trying to shortlist 'safe enough' and 'fun enough' names at the moment.  'Enough' is important - no one is perfectly safe (least of all JC) but are they going to be safe enough for our people?  We don't need a laugh every two seconds, but we don't want something so heavy it depresses everyone.  We don't come just to have our feathers stroked, but we don't come to be trampled on either.  We have some good names on our shortlist at present, male and female, left, right and centre, academic and popular but - and I suspect this is the key - they are all Baptists and they all know about being a Baptist minister.

For me, the 'where' is less signifiacnt than the 'what and who', for others the converse may be true.  Because those on our shortlist are - generally - well known in Baptist circles, they will be being asked pretty soon if they are free.  My hope and prayer is that this time next year we will be a less anxious planning team!

I begin to understand better how Biblical scholars feel when preachers massacre texts, or make prouncements based on some dodgey English translation.  Last night at Girls' Brigade I was handed another request for a risk assessment by someone who does not know what she's talking about - and who had the audacity to tell me that something causing fairly minor injury was a high risk.  So I'm back on my hobby horse about this whole area (where I am still one of the best qualified people around) and the Completely Ridiculous Assessment Procedures (you work out the acronym, I couldn't possibly comment) in circulation.

So, if you want something sensible, practical and useable by lay people then get the HSE publication 'Five Steps to Risk Assessment' (available online here) you don't need a load of numbers, what you need is a congruent qualitative argument.  Rocket science it isn't, common sense and good practice it is.

I get the odd snipe from school teachers who think they know better than I in this area; in terms of what local authorities do that is undoubtedly true, in terms of risk assessment and safety culture, well, give me a certain 'hazardous industry' most days of most weeks!