Small things amuse small minds, so mine must be minute.

The next couple of Sundays I'm playing around a little bit with the sermon slot of our services, and the prospect is making me happy!

The flow of the services is much as ever, but a few stylistic experiments ... hopefully it will be OK!

For the last five years, it has never ceased to amaze me how many English-accent people I meet at meetings and events I attend.  I have periodically commented on what has felt a disporprtionate number of English-born people speaking in Baptist or charitable fora. 

The reality is, I'm just a bit thick!  The data shows that there are around 400,000 English-born adults living in Scotland out of a population of roughly 5,000,000 (I've rounded to make the sums easy).  Which means roughly 1 in 12 adults are English-born, so it's pretty inevitable, overall, that I will hear quite a lot of English accents.

What intrigues me is my sense that in the charitable organisations in which I move, the proportion is possibly higher, which gives me pause for thought. 

And if anyone is interested, there are roughly twice as many Scottish-born people living in England but with an overall population ten times that of Scotland, the dilution effect is huge, with less than 1 in 60 people being Scots.

Yesterday morning I was at a consultation/training type thng looking at proposed changes in the way charities report to OSCR in order to improve accountability and transparency.  It all seemed a bit of a no-brainer to me (and to most people there) but it's good that there has been a consultation process rather than simply implementation 'from on high'.  I do feel that Scotland is better at this, overall, than the equivalent bodies for other parts of the UK.  Some of that has to be about size/scale but I am sure there are things that could be scaled up by a factor of ten and still be workable.

Yesterday afternoon I was happily exploring the Book of Judith; this morning I've been thinking about midweek reflections/worship/prayers for the first half of 2015, ranging from Mindfulness to Ignatian to a Lent Study to Compline.  Later I have to write a talk from the Friday afternoon 'gospel meeting' style group.  And all of that is good, too - contextual and diverse, reflecting the constituency we serve.  Good job I have catholic tastes in spiritual expression!

In between times, I've been doing some admin, some general planning, clearing the actions I picked up at various meetings and preparing for some pastoral responsibilties.  All in all, it's proving rewarding and serves to remind me why I love this church so much.  It's never dull, and usually it's fun.

I've just spent a happy couple of hours putting together some supporting handouts for up-coming Bible study on the book of Judith, the third in a short series looking at aspects of the Apocrypha.  It's proving to be a lot of fun (for me anyway) giving me lots of "aha" moments as I spot resonances, echoes and similarities with other Bible stories.

Having already done a quick overview and a deeper study (led by someone else) on Tobit it certainly is proving an enthralling series, with (I think) Sirach and Wisdom of Solomon still to be explored.

The next challenge is to find something new for Advent!

On Sunday we had 'organised chaos' as we celebrated harvest and raised lots of money to help people in food poverty.

This morning I was at the uni chapel to lead morning prayers on 1 Kings 22 (a very weird story!) only to discover a team from the BBC filming for The One Show as part of a segment relating to the commemorations of 1914... the relative of a Glasgow Uni trained VC who died in 1914 was there... so were eight young things from the CU...  Good challenge to think on my feet how to hold all that together.

Next I am off to meet with two others ministers to plan a service of Grieving and Gratitude for the evening of the first Sunday in November... this is always a privilege to participate in.

After that it is a sermon for Freedom Sunday, focussing on human trafficking, a mini sermon for the very conservative group that meets on a Friday afternoon and a Bible study on Judith to prepare for next week.

So pretty much the sublime to the 'cor blimey' I think! (I'll leave it to you to decide which is which!!)

All good fun, and the diversity certainly fuels my imagination. 

But next time I'm at uni chapel prayers, I hope I have less unpronounceable Hebrew names to tussle with!