Tim has just posted a rather poignant photo of their former church and its surrounding community at their blog and if you click on the title of the post it opens up a gallery of photos.

As a kind of solidarity among tabernaclers, here's one of mine from Dibley which is not disimilar in feel/context.

The end of my first year as minister of Dibley saw the enforced closure of the much-loved sanctuary exactly a week before Christmas.  We were forced to make rapid phone calls to other churches to find places we could meet for our Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, Boxing Day and then ever after services.  I trekked up (and down) the hill where the manse and church stood with a case full of candles, Bible, notes, CDs and whatever else was needed.  But the welcome was there and we discovered new insights into the "Christmas Story."

This year some friends of mine in a little (brick as it happens) Tabernacle in East Manchester have been forced to move out into the nomadic existence I had come to know rather well.  For them, Sundays are sometimes in their front room, sometimes in borrowed buildings, sometimes as guests of others, sometimes outside.  A faithful and courageous little community camping in a city.

And now I am once more in a city, vibrant with life and bustling with people of diverse ethnicity and social group.  Once more a church that is camping, tabernacling, albeit in it's own 'back garden', and has been for several years.  Here, as elsewhere, people gather week by week, putting out chairs, making a temporary worship space in the room we use for pretty much everything.  Once more, I am seeing new slants on an old story.

I know quite a few 'tabernacling' churches.  Some have deliberately chosen this model, some have had it thrust upon them.  Some are doing it for a reason or a season, others by choice or circumstance will do it for life.  Some feel it is second best, others see it is a great opportunity.  As for me, I delight in the flexibility and freedom it offers, whilst recognising the constraints and challenges it brings.

I recall, when I was a teenager, hearing a version of the prologue to John's gospel which said that God's word 'came and tabernacled among us.'  I guess there is something gospel and incarnational about being a tabernacling church, a church that is a little bit precarious, a little bit vulnerable, a little bit temporary, a little bit on the margins... a little bit like the craziness of God born as a peasant baby who grew into a wandering preacher maybe...?

To all fellow tabernacling churches everywhere (and especially in Dibley and East Manchester)... this Christmas-tide may you find afresh the wonder of the Christ-child who shares your vulnerability and courage, and may you be blessed as your bless those around you.

Today I am preparing my sermon on 'being joyful' ready for Advent 3 on Sunday.  Without giving the game away (as so many church folk now follow my online waffle) I will majoring on the imperative to rejoice (to be joyful) and specifically to 'rejoice in the Lord' in Philippians 4:4.  However, as I have been pondering the characteristics of joy (which is not an emotion but a part of the fruit of the spirit) I found myself drawing up a list not unlike the great hymn to love in 1 Corinthians 13 (and to which I made reference in last week's sermon) and recalling how on a previous occasion when pondering characterstics of 'hope' I had been drawn to Hebrews 11 on faith.

Today a penny dropped - which probably did for everyone else decades ago.  Of course I will find myself spotting similarities in these characterstics because they are are all part of the one fruit.  Perhaps it is because we too often slip into the idea of 'fruits' (and I have to confess I have tended to permit myself that dodginess when exploring the 'fruit' in all age contexts, my 'Galatian 5 fruit salad' approach) or because if we try to get it 'right' we have each characterstic as a segment of an orange (i.e. still distinct and identifiable) that we (or I anyway) fail to appreciate the interconnectedness and interchangeability of the words in some of the 'great passages' and how the charactertistics augment and can be similar to each other

So, anyway, I won't be preaching on this per se on Sunday but if you fancy an 'exercise for student' why not try to list some characteristics of love or joy or peace or patience or whatever and then compare them with 1 Corinthians 13:4-7 or Hebrews 11: 1-3 or any other passage that leaps to mind.

Last Sunday we welcomed two people into membership of our church using the form of words laid out in Gathering for Worship.  It was, I think, a joyous occasion, and one that many people seemed to appreciate.  However, someone commented to me that they wondered about making such a big deal of it, and what any visitors or new people might make of the whole rigmarole.  These were good questions about which, if I am honest, I have never really thought because all the Baptist (URC and even Methodist) churches I've had associations with or been a member of have had equally significant rituals (for want of a better word) for welcoming new members.  That doesn't make it right or wrong, it just makes it my normative experience.  And it's an approach I value because I think the promises made are important and I think it is important to make a bit of a fuss of the people involved (though maybe that says more about my needs than anything else!!).  But what could I live with as a pared down version of this?  Must people stand (or sit) at the front of the church facing everyone else?  What is a minimum requirement by way of declarations of faith and commitment?  How important is it that other people offer the 'right hand of fellowship'?  And so on, and so on.

Whilst I would be very happy to adjust and tweak the words and format to reflect individual circumstances, there are some things I think are essential as symbols and signs of what we are doing...

• Reception into membership, like Baptism, is a public act and must take place in the context of public worship
• Reception into membership is a solemn undertaking and must involve some form of declaration of faith and some acceptance of the responsibilities to public worship, private prayer, mission and participation in the church meeting.  This need not be mega heavy, and the forms offered in Gathering for Worship and/or Patterns and Prayers are neither unduly onerous nor unhelpfully narrow.

Apart from that, I think that it is up to the individuals involved to work out the fine details whilst keeping a framework that ensures some kind of continuity through time.

In the last two churches I worked with there was a rather fine, very old, tradition of new members adding their own name to the membership book.  At Dibley we had a book dating back to 1875, in Manchester the book in use was newer, but additional, older volumes completed the full list.  This visible sign of the 'communion of saints' (a concept Baptists seem to be getting more keen on these days) including notes of transfers and deaths was a much treasured part of each of these fellowships.

I know some churches are moving away from 'traditional' congregational ecclesiology approaches to membership (which are probably about as biblical as Christmas trees anyway) and using annual community covenants instead, albeit with their own problems and benefits.  Maybe I'm just more of an old traditionalist that I like to realise, but I can't help feeling there is something instrinsically good about welcoming our new members, whether their route in is Baptism, confession of faith or transfer.

What do others think?  What do your churches do?  Do you have customs that are worth sharing?

One of the joys of this place is the cultural and ethnic diversity.  We have recently been blessed by the arrival of two people in our church who speak almost no English, yet who come faithfully, participate fully (even telling me one week they understood the sermon) and are always smiling.  On Sunday after the service I made a point of inviting them to come to our Christmas Day lunch.  Their delight was very apparent, and one of them in halting English said, 'in [my country], my little family; here, my big family.'  I was touched that she felt this, and glad too, because she expressed feelings with which I would concur about this church.  Some people visit us and decide what we are is not what they seek, which is fine, but everyone I have met comments on the warmth of the welcome and the sense of open-handed love they feel.  We aren't prefect, of course not, but this is a strength of this church, and I can't help feeling it's rather a good one!