Life seems to be accelerating and I wanted to just catch some of the things that have happened in the last few days.
Friday was my day off but was spent going back to Crawley to sort out a few remaining tasks. I then got held up on the way back on the M25 and A14 so that I was late for the Ringstead Flower Festival dedication service (I was supposed to do the readings from Scripture), fortunately Rosemary sorted things out in my absence. Met lots of people though including 3 mayors (not something I am very used to doing).
Saturday was the District Synod, I tried my new Nokia wireless keyboard out for real and it proved a really good way to take notes during meetings just as I hoped. I use it with a Nokia 6680 and it was far more convenient than a laptop and much better to type on that any PDA I have used before.
Sunday was busy with a morning communion service at Ringstead (next time will definately be using the laptop for the liturgy as they did not have the latest service books). I then had to sprint to Stanwick (and I was right 6 minutes was not long enough for an unfit minister to cycle there. We had a superb BBQ (albeit indoors due to weather) followed by a Harvest service. Got home after 4 and then went to re:refresh as Raunds. This is our fresh expression of worship and is very much in the early stages so exciting and flexible. It also includes freshly made doughnuts. This week J made milkshakes - he also seemed to have attacked the battenburg cake with a threshing machine which made for interesting looking pieces. One of the good things about worship like this is the way you can adapt to the needs of those there at the time which allowed us to spend time with M who had come for the first time in the morning. After that I took Andrew to the circuit youth group called Chwalibog.
The life of a Methodist Minister seems to revolve around a very full diary which I am determined to manage and control. This time of year is particularly busy with the combination of:
- Start of a new Methodist year means plenty of meetings
- Starting as a new minister means a need to get to meet people and particularly to catch-up on those whose lives have been going through difficult or exciting times during the change-over time. Also many things take more time as you try to discover the local ways of being church.
- Start of a new school year brings challenges and opportunities
I am now looking forward to something every weekday night (except Friday, my day off) for 3 weeks. Many of these are a real priviledge as people invite you into their lives and homes at their highs and lows. Others are a real opportunity to see how the church and community are responding to the call of God.
This means that despite my new power to work on Leonardo (commit permissions) I have not done any more than be a user with the Raunds Methodist Church site, but I am happy with the way it is working there. It also means that 42 is sufferring a little from lack of extra content (I also had intended to try out some of the new typepad features but maybe later).
Off now to do some visiting.
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