I was in town today, buying odds and ends, when I spotted a rare sight - a little girl of around six, striding through the rain, wearing a pink fire-fighter's helmet.  I was struck by how faintly ridiculous it was - and how great it was too.  A bit like a God who sneaks into earth as a newborn baby really.

I meet a lot of ministers who say that the idea that ministers are especially busy at Christmas is a myth.  I wonder what planet they live on!  Granted, I don't spend as much time writing carefully crafted, hopefully profound, sermons as at other times of year, but the sheer quantity of services, and all the intricacies of ecumenical negotiations for collaborative outreach mean one heck of a lot of work.

This morning I have been printing service leaflets -  fifty, on white with coloured bits, for Sing Christmas; 200 on pale green plus 10 gargantuan print for Sing Like an Angel (our tea-then-carol-service outreach); 150 on yellow - and do I need any gargantuan? - for the Christingle service.  Then there will a couple of dozen of Christmas Eve communion, and trust the Meths to sort the ones for Christmas Day which they are hosting...

In the coming days I also have the lunch club Christmas dinner and a trip to a 'living nativity' with the reception class at school as well as the usual round of hospital visits (I assume there are churches where no one spends Christmas on the NHS...?) meetings and administration.

What excites me is the potential to interact with anything up to 500 people in a week, sharing with them in some small measure what this season is, for Christians, celebrating.

Already I have the onset of the "ministers' Christmas cold" (obligatory in this community, it seems) but am looking forward to the coming few days. I am happy to have a Christmas rush, not unhappy to miss Christmas TV for hospital visits and ferrying lonely souls to and from lunch out at a restaurant.  As for those who see Christmas as a slow down time in their ministry - well that's fine; just maybe they miss out some of the delight as well?

At last night's deacons' meeting we were discussing the possible uses of our recent bequests, and concluded that although the two practical ideas we'd had were good ones, there was a danger of the suggested equipment not being used effectively.  We couldn't think of anything we actually needed, but didn't want the money simply to disappear into paying the rent at school.  After a bit of thinking, we came up with the idea of committing to supply the school where we meet with copies of Scripture Union's 'It's Your Move' for all year six children for a period of, say three years.  Whether the Church will agree to this, I have no idea, but it sounds a really positive idea to me.  So Yay and Amen!

I had forgotten that last Sunday was that great liturgical feast known as Baptist Headcount Sunday until last night's deacons' meeting when my Church Secretary mentioned it.  For the third year running, our attendance was 'abnormal' because we had loads of visitors - D+1's folk and a family with a baby for a blessing.  So instead of our normal 25 adults, none under 45, we had 63 adults aged from 20 upwards and 8 children!  Maybe its as well some churches will have been lower than normal to bring some balance?

We all know the old Sunday School model of three answers to prayer: 'yes', 'no' and 'wait.' Recently, at the foot of one of those utterly twee circular emails we all get, was a subtly different version: 'yes', 'not yet' and 'I have something better for you.' Apart from speaking into my own life at the moment, this seemed a more helpful model - if one that is possibly more demanding theologically.

When we pray for healing - meaning physical cure - we really don't won't to hear God say 'no' or even 'what I have in mind for you is so much better.' But, dare I suggest, the latter is more in keeping with our mysterious and loving God? We ask our parents for our immediate desire to be fulfilled and they say 'no': we feel let down, rejected, less loved. We ask them the same question and they say 'well I could do that but I've got something in mind that would be even better': we are intrigued, what could be better than the latest 'must have' toy? Perhaps it takes us time to work out that what we are given is indeed 'better' (whatever that may mean in context) but it seems a more hopeful response than plain old fashioned 'no.'

~"~

On Monday morning, as I set off for my mentor course, for some reason I put my Association directory in my bag.  No idea why - I never take it anywhere, it lives on my desk near the phone.  On the evening of the first day I switched on my mobile phone - it is off 90% of the time - in case there any were messages.  Unusually, no less than three popped up - two to tell me someone had tried to phone me from a number I did not recognise, and one, timed a mere five minutes earlier, from someone I used to go to school with asking for the phone number of a specific Leicester Baptist minister as a matter of urgency.  How either of these people got my 'church' mobile number I do not know but they did.  Why did I turn on the phone at the right time and have the right information to hand (though I do have the phone numbers of other ministers in my phone whom I could have asked)?  Was, this all coincidence, divine prompting or just plain spooky?!  Whose prayers were being answered and how?  Hmm.