Here is the liturgy we will use tomorrow morning at Dibley to release one another from the covenant promises we made almost six years ago.  They deliberately echo the words of the 'Second Pattern of Induction' from Patterns and Prayers (p 190-191) which we used at that time.

Release of Covenant

Minister:

On [induction date], before God and in the presence of many witnesses, I declared that I believed in my heart that I had been called by God to serve in pastoral oversight of this church and congregation. I now believe that call has been fulfilled and that God has brought us to a parting of the ways.

People:

On [induction date], before God and in the presence of many witnesses, we declared that we believed you had been called by God to be our minister. We, too, now believe that call has been fulfilled and that God has brought us to a parting of the ways.

Minister:

At my induction I promised to carry out this ministry with enthusiasm and dedication, to set God’s word before people, to lead in the conduct of worship, to work in partnership with deacons, members and attenders, and to encourage you all to carry out Christ’s mission in the local community and in the world.

I have done my best to keep my promises.

For the ways in which I have succeeded, I give thanks to God.

For the ways I have failed, I apologise and seek forgiveness.

People:

For the ways in which you have succeeded in keeping your promises, we give thanks to God.

For the ways you have failed, we accept your apologies and forgive you.

At your induction we promised to encourage and support you, working together cheerfully and humbly in extending the work of the kingdom of God

We have done our best to keep our promises.

For the ways in which we have succeeded, we give thanks to God.

For the ways we have failed, we apologise and seek forgiveness.

Minister:

For the ways in which you have succeeded in keeping your promises, I give thanks to God.

For the ways you have failed, I accept your apologies and forgive you.

We have declared before God our belief that this ministry is now complete, I ask you therefore to release me from my covenant to you.

People:

We release you to God’s safekeeping

May you continue to walk in Christ’s footsteps and grow in maturity as his faithful disciple.

We have declared before God our belief that this ministry is now complete, we ask you therefore to release us from our covenant to you.

Minister:

I release you to God’s safekeeping

May you continue to walk in Christ’s footsteps and grow in maturity as his faithful disciples.

All:

We have declared our belief that this ministry is now complete and have released one another from the covenant that bound us. We now pray God’s blessing for one another:

May the Lord bless us and keep us

The Lord make his face to shine upon us and be gracious unto us

The Lord lift up the light of his countenance upon us and give us peace

Now and forevermore Amen

(You can tell how appealing sorting and clearing isn't by my practical outworking of 'sporadic!')

Anyway, HT Polly, this is fun and clever, and this is good too.  Plenty more onYou Tube!  Enjoy.

If you haven't yet discovered The Beaker Folk of Husbourne Crawley (HT Andy Jones who introduced me to them some time ago; see link, left) or of you need some relief from hymnological absurdity, check this out, it's fun.

Tonight the D+2 Girls' Brigade met for the first and last time this academic year - a party to celebrate 46 years of witness and service which ended today. Around fifty folk, including the founding officers, were present for an evening of food, chat and, for the girls, games.  At the end of the evening we gave each girl an age-appropriate Bible story book; many of them asked us to sign them as a keepsake, which I found rather touching.  I returned home with arms-ful of flowers and no more vases in which to put them. Alas neither 28 years a GB leader nor Baptist ministerial training/experience have equippped me to conjure up vases ex nihilo, shocking I know, but there you have it.  Various containers have been press-ganged into service to hold the blooms overnight until I can sort out something better.

As someone for whom GB was very formative in her faith-story, I am sad that D+2 comapny has closed, though I do appreciate and understand the reasons.  I am glad that we have been able to show these girls something of God's love, which never fails, and pray that one day the seeds sown will burst forth into glorious bloom.  In the meantime, I am looking forward to getting to know Girls' Brigade Scotland, Greater Glasgow Division.

Phew!

On Thursday night this computer died - or so it seemed - all the tricks I knew for managing to get it work failed and I was left wondering how I could recover all my essential files, contacts and the like when my tame computer experts were all away for the weekend.  In one last attempt I managed to boot it into set-up mode (it had been 'hanging' at the end of the boot checks just before the 'clunk' that tells you it's going into windows (if this sounds ancient technology, it is, but at least it's user fixable!)) tabbed round the options changed nothing whatsoever, then it slowly but surely opened up windows and so far so good... not that I'll be shutting it down in a hurry!

The hope was that it would see me through my move north and give my time to decide what new hardware will best serve my needs - what can connect to my equally old but reliable and really cheap to run HP laserjet 5 A3 printer, what has enough USB ports for the umpteen things I conect (I currently have a powered 7-way USB hub!) and so on.

Anyway I now have, so far as I know, the world's only Lazarus computer, busily printing off essential documents and waiting for me to back-up (again) and copy/print absolutely everything I might possibly want, just in case...