I am starting to plan for our upcoming Baptismal service.  I am hoping that members of the candidate's family will come to the service, and certainly am planning my readings/sermon to reflect that hope.  I have been trawling hymn/song books and now, having splashed out £65 for the privilege, Hymnquest, in search of hymns/songs to flesh out the service around the one or two items that will be chosen (not because that's all I'd allow, because that's how many are likely to be adequately significant to get chosen).

So, off I set, seeking Baptism as a theme/heading (so BPW/BHB then, though Hymnquest offers it as a theme).  If one uses the more popular evangelical/charismatic books, one could be forgiven for thinking no one did Baptism anymore since the heading simply is not there.  Even in Hymnquest it is mostly infant Baptism songs built on a covenant theology for inclusion of children - not quite the thing for a 70-something believer!

So here's a challenge for those decent Baptist/baptistic hymn-writers out there - write us something decent for believer Baptism please.  Or, failing that, maybe think of suitable verses to add to the likes of 'Jesus calls us here to meet him' (I got as far as 'Jesus calls us to the waters' then ran out of steam!)

We will most probably be using (in addition to the candidate's choice(s)) those listed below; the last four are the 'getting changed' songs!!

Jesus call us here to meet Him (Iona)

Take this moment, sign and space (Iona)

O Jesus I have promised (J E Bode)

River, wash over me (David Brown)

Let the beauty of Jesus be seen in me (Albert Orsborn)

In my life, Lord, be glorified (Bob Kilpatrick)

Jesus, take me as I am (Dave Bryant)

If anyone has any useful suggestions/additions please let me know.

This Sunday is our Churches Together One World Week service.  Quite when the OWW organsiation and the churches got so out on synchon dates I don't know, but OWW is now early in the year and the service remains in October.  All this is a bit of an aside really, to wondering what other Churches Together groups share by way of services?  Our current pattern is that we share the following (arranged to fit the liturgical year!):

Advent 3 - Outreach Carol event (evening, with food, lots of)

Christmas Eve - Christingle to support denominational(-ish) children's charities

Christmas Day - united celebration service

Week of prayer for Christian Unity - united service (afternoon)

Ash Wednesday - Anglicans invite free churches along

Lent - joint study groups

Good Friday - united outreach event, morning

Easter Sunday - joint Methodist-Baptist breakfast service

Ascension - united service with communion; rite of host church

Pentecost - united outreach event (afternoon)

OWW - united service (afternoon)

This seems to me to be a good level of co-operation and shared worship with at least part of every major festival being spent/celebrated together.  I'm not going to pretend there aren't any politics or huffs, because there are certainly both, but what we do find is that outreach is 'better together' with people usually impressed to discover that Christians can work with, rather than against, each other.  I wonder what others think?

Plus some cheese, eggs, ham, sausage rolls, cake, tea, coffee, fourteen hymns/songs and forty-five people squeezed into one lounge to praise God.

Today was our (new this year!) quarterly lunch club service where we go out to where members live and do a songs of praise service and tea.  This time we hit parity on numbers - as many folk who are not part of our regular congregation as are.  Well, OK if you include me there was one more of us, we didn't have two half people.

Things that I find about these events are...

• no one can believe we do this for no charge and with no collection
• we have finally got to the stage where enough church folk just get on and do what is needed without having to be asked, cajoled or rostered to do it (though it still falls to the minister to supply a few folding chairs which we now seem to need wherever we go)
• people really enjoy singing the hymns, seem to value the prayers and listen carefully to the 5 minute thought for the day
• the buzz, laughter, sense of well-being and life-giving is enormous
• we always have enough baskets of left-overs to feed a few folk for Monday lunch!

Today's reading combined the Revelation 7 vision of people of all tribes, nations and tongues with the Johanine promise of many mansions and divine shalom.  If the realisation of these visions or metaphors extends to the fulfilment what we shared a glimpse of today then they will be truly wonderful.  One of my throw away comments was that maybe if heaven was like a house with many rooms it would be a bit like the sheltered complex - to which one 95 year-old responded "ooh, what a lovely thought.'  I hope, then, for her, that it is.

Today was our half yearly Association Day and around 200 of us gathered at a very functional 1960's (?) built and pre-fab portacabin type extended secondary school in Derbyshire.  The weather was dull and by the end of the day had degenerated to drizzle.  It perhaps doesn't sound like a very auspicious occasion but in fact it was in some measure a thing of colour, beauty, light and hope.  Topped and tailed by creative acts foworship combining skilful liturgy, drama, interaction and singing, we had some superb speakers brought up specially from Didcot (bow, bow) to share thoughts on Baptist People - Transforming Communties.

The keynote speaker was Revd Graham Sparkes who allowed paitings by the African American Jacob Lawrence to illustrate the potential for discovering beauty not despite struggle, not even alongside struggle but actually within it.  That seemed a word in season for so many in our Association at this time.  I wish I could find online one of the paintings he used which showed a wooden stair ascending to a blue rectangle with a yellow-orange circle superimposed upon it.  Was it a closed door, blue with a gold handle?  Was it the moon in a night sky seen through an open window?  Although my first thought was the second of these, either could be valid, functioning not as some crude optimist/pessimist test but a relfection of the ambiguity of life.  After all, even a closed door just might open to something wonderful...

In the closing worship we were invited to make our own Salvadorean crosses - emulating in some small measure the beauty that can arise from places of pain and struggle - which were then used to decorate a large wooden cross.  Here again signs of colour, life and hope even in a tough world.

As we left, a few of us comented that it is always the same people who go the Association days - the churches who are represented. None of us from massive churhces, though several from large ones.  All of us face challenges and struggles wherever we are, but when we come together are encouraged to continue to be what we are - something beautiful for God.

The Baptist Union of Great Britain must have almost ground to a halt today, or at least the Didcot and East Midlands bits thereof, as so many of us gathered to say farewell to Peter Grange, celebrating his life and praying for those who mourn and miss him most.  It was a truly great service in which we worshipped and remembered, gave thanks and were encouraged for our own ministries.

Meanwhile, about 10 miles away a family with no church connection drafted in a minister to conduct a funeral for a loved one at the local crematorium.  I know this, because after careful thought, I declined the request from the undertaker to 'help them out' - and offers of alternative times did not fit what was already booked.  I genuinely hope their needs were met.

And fifty miles away a friend was attending a funeral in difficult circumstances and, even as I laughed at funny stories and sang with gusto where I was, I was aware that others were facing more challenging services.

Lots of death around at the moment in Baptist circles, or at least those in which I move.  Lots of different circumstances as unfulfilled potential sits cheek by jowl with immense achievement, as 'taken too soon' follows 'fullness of years,' as 'sure and certain hope' is mirrored by 'the mercy and grace of Almighty God.'

It seems good, to me, to pause, to reflect and to wonder at the amazing God who holds it all...

The text for the address at Peter's service was the one to which I trace my own call to ordained ministry - and I'm sure I'm not alone in that - and it was a fitting place to hear that call reaffirmed, to recommit myself to obey it in the future I as yet cannot see.