This Sunday I will be the guest preacher at the church I am visiting... my name even appears their website, so no getting out of it either for them or for me!  This "hit and run" form of preaching is one I don't do very often anymore, and it has demands on the preacher very different from those of preaching week in, week out, in one place.

For those who think I am very organised, maybe I should mention that I was sent the complete order of service, minus Bible reading(s) nearly three weeks ago... call to worship, responsive bits and all the hymns already chosen.  That was interesting, because rather than starting with a Bible reading or a theme and working 'outwards' to the hymns etc, I found myself working 'inwards' from the hymns to find some sort of threads and thence Bible readings that will work with them.

I don't want to give away everything, just in case anyone from that church happens to reading this stuff, but one of the ideas I am playing with involves setting alongside each other these verses (emphasis mine):

Genesis 1:27

So God created humankind in his image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.

and

Galatians 3:28

There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.

I am playing with the idea of rendering 'male and female' as 'male-and-female' (since Genesis 1 does not make any such disctinction in the animal kingdom, there must some sort of significance in noting it for humans and of course Genesis 2 et seq takes a trajectory whereby 'male-or-female' becomes increasingly significant.

Probably most of what I'm mulling won't make the cut, and probably it's not linguistically justified... but it is interesting to ponder why if male-and-female bears the image of God and is divinely decreed 'very good' in Genesis 1 that Paul, in Galatians 3, declares that in Christ 'male-and-female' is a redundant distinction.  Perhaps the term has simply become too corrupt, too divisive... and perhaps I'm just missing the point!

Much as I love preparing sermons, I am intellectually and spiritually very tired... after this week it will be good to have a longish break from it.

Slathering on the Factor 50 sunscreen and making sure I had long sleeves as well, was a good thing, as my meeting this morning ended up as almost two hours al fresco at a well known coffee shop chain a couple of minutes from the church I was visiting.

My meeting was with the person who is designated as 'Pastor of Young Adults' in a team ministry in a relatively large Baptist church.  Out of their 200-ish folk around 40 are in this category, many, but not all, students at their local university.  They are a 'student church' (i.e. one that the CU funnel people towards, though to be fair one of a number in that city).  Proportionally, then, not so different from us, though we are not a student (or any other demographic label) church.

It was interesting to hear of the work they do - pretty similar to our own, if a deal more formalised in terms of organisation and more explicitly resourced, in terms of people and pennies.  There were a few useful ideas to ruminate upon, which is a good thing.  Overall, though, I came away encouraged that we are doing a very similar thing.  The big difference, inevitably, is that they have strong links with the CU, which we don't, and that they are seen as a student church, which we aren't.  I suspect there is scope for us to develop links with the still very small and fragile SCM work in Glasgow, and to be a little less reticent about who and what we are.

Good practices we seem to share include:

• Freshers' week events
• Student lunches (though they are far more developed in this)
• Knowing students names and fields of study early on
• 'Spotting' students and linking them in
• Involving students, who are happy to, in the 'normal' life of the church
• Trying to listen to want students would value

Things we might want to consider are:

• Use of social media (secret or closed FB groups)
• Links to church families as well as general student stuff (i.e. small number of students having lunch/dinner in people's homes now and then)
• Is there a place for student/young adult Bible study/home group?

Things where we may be doing especially well are:

• Relating to overseas students, including those with limited English
• Keeping long term links with our 'alimuni' - though I expect we could develop this further

So all in all, a good morning's work.  Now I am free to melt a little!!

Off this morning to vist the first of the 'churches in vibrant urban contexts'... in a city about an hour's train ride from here.  Feels a long way to go for an hour, as that is all they will give me, but I am genuinely interested to learn from them about their work with students and young adults.  I had hoped to set up another meet in the same place, but this turned out not to be feasible, so I guess I may just have to make the most of a restful day!

Things I want to chat around...

• what is the demographic of their students? (home/overseas, under/post-grad, mature/young art/science etc)
• how do they reach out to/make contact with students?
• how do students find them beyond that?
• what specific student activities/events do they have?
• how much are students integrated into the overall life of the church?
• how do they relate to their local university?  ...and will the chaplaincy let them in?!

All good stuff.  Will report back later!

So, as if I didn't already know it, I am rubbish at 'slow'... the last week of doing next to nothing was good but oddly demanding and I found myself chaffing at the bit to get 'doing' again.  Part of my trouble is that I am 'quick'... people have told me all my life that I do twice as much in half the time as anyone else (I think that means four times as fast or four times as much or both) and that for me is just 'normal'.  I'd like to think, though, that more often than not, 'quick' does not directly equate to 'thoughtless' or 'hasty' (even though my typing is bad and I never did properly learn to read over my work before submitting it).

The dangers of 'fast' coupled with 'thoughtless' are something that I see all too often since I succombed to the use of Facebook about a year ago.  Often drawing on posts from Twitter, things spread like wildfire, being 'retweeted' and 'shared' unchecked, unverified and, all to often, untrue.  I get bored with checking the veracity of things I am invited to 'like' or 'share' and tired of typing "erm, I think it's a hoax" into comment boxes.  There is fast and there is too fast; there is quick and there is careless.  I fail to comprehend the motivation of the hoaxers, but they have the ability to cause ludicrous amounts of harm.

I think my internal dilemma arises from the fact that as well as having high speed, workaholic tendencies, I also over-reflect, turning things over and over in my mind... so to slow down is to give more space for this mulling and ruminating, potentially more than is necessarily helpful.  It's not that I feel a need to cram every waking moment with activity (or 'productive' activity) - I can happily sit and ignore housework for weeks on end; it's not that I am too busy to 'smell the roses' - I can spend time happily gazing at the moon or wandering in a park; it's just that I am not good at slow.

So, although this week has a lot more planned activity, I am going to try to keep it on a slower pace, to make more time 'be'.   I'm not sure what that will look like, not yet how it will feel, but I'm going to try...

So, I arrived at the church I was visiting about ten minutes before the service was due to begin, following a couple up the steps to the open door of the vestibule.  A woman steward smiled, introduced herself, held the inner door open and said "you can sit anywhere".  There were very few people present, so I headed for an empty row, not quite at the back, and sat down.  Slowly the church filled up, someone sat next to me and started to chat... all was fine until she asked me what I do for a living: cover blown!  In total cover was blown three times, but most people will not have had a clue who I was.

The service began five minutes after the advertised start time, and ended roughly 80 minutes later, having included communion.  The sermon was well crafted and thoughtful, being very pertinent to the resident congregation at this stage in their lives together.  It did not tell me anything I hadn't already thought, many times, but it was good to be reminded of parts of the story of Moses, of the fact that the Bible is 'edited highlights', of the God who is always there, even we might begin to wonder, and whose plans and dreams go beyond anything our frail minds might dare contemplate.

Musically it was OK - the musicians were competent and were definitely leading worship not performing, but it did confuse me to have one hymn (based on a psalm) with the verses in a very jumbled order.  I knew most of the hymns and easily picked up the others.

The prayers were mixed - all extempore, some an excellent example of this genre, others, well, really, just, typical of it.

Communion was rather odd - devoid of meaningful liturgy, and it felt like we were invited to come forward to receive at least three times before it occurred.  For me, the most weird thing was collecting my bit of bread and my thimble of wine and then having to carry them back to my seat to consume them... made more disconcerting when someone collided with me, causing me to spill half of the wine.  I guess you would grow accustomed to it, and find a way to enter into it more purposefully, but I found it very odd.

So to my little set of questions!

• The welcome.  At the door, a smiling, friendly person, though I was then left to fend for myself.  Those sitting nearby were gently inquisitive, asked my name and chatted.  The service began with a weclome from the front.  The downside is that once everyone is in they bolt the front doors, and the only way out is via a side door - which no-one thinks to mention until you are about to leave.  A good welcome; about right for me.

• How easy or difficult it is to know what is going on? Everything was announced, so it was easy to follow the service.  Just my perennial grouch that we told to stand to sing, rather than invited to do so if we were able.  That said, the person who read the scriptures, an American who claimed that Baptists have always stood for this (really?  not any Baptists I've known!) did add 'if we can'.  Easy to follow, no uncomfortable surprises, but a sense of being 'told' rather than 'invited' to particpate.  If I had tried to leave straight away rather than chatting I might have gone to the wrong door and been left very confused!

• Liturgical process.  Well, yes, most of the elements were there... gathering, praise, listening, breaking bread, praying (for specific people in the church) and a kind of a blessing.  To be honest, the feel was more conference than act of worship, and this was down to the language rather than the process.  Absence of confession and intercession were glaringly obvious... so typical British Baptists.

• Practical and logistical. It was a nice space, a tastefully updated Victorian chapel, with the standard issue padded church chairs with little holes for communion cups drilled into the tops.  The gap between rows was more than adequate and I did not feel squashed up to my neighbours even though the chairs were (rightly) linked together.  Projection of words used (by default) a dyslexia friendly colour scheme, though I'd have loved to adjust the font size (down) and insert a few line breaks in the correct places (that's a fault of the hymn software they were using, not them per se) and the PA was clear.  There were no distractions and it was a pleasant place to be.

• Do I actually feel I have been in worship?  Yes, I did.  Nothing dramatic, just the use of one the hymns that we had used last week, that gave me a sense of continuity, and some gentle reminders of things I already know of how God works.  Good atmosphere, attentive congregation, focussed throughout.

• How did the coffee and cake compare with ours?!  It didn't!  A lovely lady poured me a cup of the most insipid chapel tea I've come across in a very long time, which I then had to carry some distance to another table to find the milk.  There was a plenteous selection of biscuits - but experience told me they all contained soy so I opted out.  There was some good chat over drinks and a lovely atmosphere... but I am already missing the home baking of my gorgeous Gatherers!  

• What felt like heaven?  The diversity of accents and nationalities... those who spoke during worship had Northern Irish, Australian, North American and Glasgow accents; I also heard people chatting in other languages.

•  What felt like the other place?  To be honest, there was nothing remotely hellish about this service; the communion was very disappointing and seemed, to me, wide of the mark, being neither 'congregational' or 'episcopal' in style and combining the worst of each.

So, all in all, a pleasant morning, good hospitality, competent and relevant preaching and a positive start to my church-crawl!