Anyone up for a chat thread?

[Naomi4Christ]

Your church is on a different scale to mine. We have around 400 to Sunday services, with an electoral roll of about 500.

From that number, we have well over 100 that volunteer.

We do have a big staff team - about 12 paid (some very part time), as well as almost full-time retired people who fulfil key roles, and 8 people on the warden team and about 10 pastoral assistants.

The thing is, your church will have all the same jobs as ours to do, and it's hard to do that single-handedly.

 

[Paidiske]

You need volunteers!

There was once a vicar who took to watching trains run though his town. When asked why he watched the trains every day, he said that these where the only things moving in his parish that he didn't have to push.


(Sorry, that's and oldie but goodie)

Don't get me wrong, I have great volunteers; admin, music, children's ministry, sacristan, pastoral visiting, all sorts of things. But I still tend to be the go-to person for questions and suggestions and so forth. So I have to manage a lot of detail that in a bigger church could be delegated.

I love the story about the trains. I can see how you would get to that point.

 

[Shane R]

Australian members: did anything notable come out of your synod last week?

 

[Paidiske]

An apology to victims of domestic violence for our part in a culture which contributed to that made headlines.

Repeated stance against same-sex marriage.

There would have been a bunch of legislation to do with professional standards matters; I'll learn more about that in due course when my diocese comes to adopt it.

Those are the things which have crossed my radar so far. My organist is, as it happens, a lawyer who does a lot of work with general synod, so when he and I have time to sit down and chat, no doubt I'll hear more.

 

[Paidiske]

There is something slightly surreal about planning one's own daughter's baptism.

 

[Arcangl86]

There is something slightly surreal about planning one's own daughter's baptism.

Do you plan on being priest or just mother for that? I know it's something a lot of priests and pastors struggle with.

 

[Shane R]

I am contemplating that same thing, as I have another daughter inbound next month. My preference is for the priest to do it. My parents are coming down too, after the birth, and they do not approve of paedobaptism, so there is that inconvenient factor.

 

[Paidiske]

Do you plan on being priest or just mother for that? I know it's something a lot of priests and pastors struggle with.

We're splitting the service and I'm getting a colleague to do the bit where they ask questions etc, but I'm doing the actual baptism. I think it would actually be neater if I could just be a parent and let the other guy do the whole thing, but there are a variety of reasons why I'm choosing not to do it that way on this particular occasion.

I have a similar problem, Shane; my in-laws are making pointed comments about this not being a real baptism. I'm hoping if any of them choose to come, they will have the good sense to be polite.

Oh, and congratulations on the new little bundle!

 

[Paidiske]

Ministry as the art of making it up as you go along: when the paddling pool you're using for a baptism gets a hole in the bottom and most of the water leaks onto the floor.

We managed to jerry-rig a solution, but it was awkward...

 

[Shane R]

I live on the US east coast about 6 or 7 miles from a beach. All of the trendy evangelical churches pick a day in the middle of the summer when they go down and do baptisms in the open water of the Chesapeake Bay and then have a cook-out themed party on the beach. I heard last summer was the first time two churches ended up down there at the same time. We Americans sometimes struggle with our social skills so they ended up setting up on opposite ends of the beach. I would have tried to combine the two tribes for the day but that was not the thinking of the parties involved.

 

[Paidiske]

I was baptised in the sea, but if you want to do that here, you really want it to be summer. It being still only early spring, the paddling pool seemed like a far better option!

 

[Mary of Bethany]

Ministry as the art of making it up as you go along: when the paddling pool you're using for a baptism gets a hole in the bottom and most of the water leaks onto the floor.

We managed to jerry-rig a solution, but it was awkward...

Since we immerse, we use a painted horse trough.

When our permanent temple is built, we'll have a real baptismal pool.

 

[Shane R]

I was working as the custodian at an Evangelical Friends church for a while (descendants of Quakers who gave up most of the Quaker distinctives to fit into a broader generic evangelicalism). They had a baptistry, but they had adopted the trend of going to the beach to do their baptisms. That poor baptistry had clearly not been used in quite some time and was filthy. I ignored it and pretended it wasn't there. It had a lovely stained glass mosaic of Jesus and a lamb that was totally covered when they lowered their projector screen.

 

[Paidiske]

See, that sort of thing is just a shame. If you have something, you should either use it or get rid of it. And if you have a beautiful piece of artwork, you should honour it for what it does to nurture your people.

 

[Shane R]

The Church of Christ that my Father has served these many years inhabits a facility that was built by the hands of the founding members in 1954. That is to say: the electric does not conform to any modern code, some of the materials are low quality, and a lot of the workmanship was a little short of professional quality. It has a baptistry of masonry composed of some type of cinder block.

I remember the time they learned the masonry was found to be hopelessly deteriorating: there was actually a candidate for baptism and Dad decided to perform the baptism prior to the 5 P.M. service so there would be time to fill the baptistry and even turn on the heating element and warm the water a bit. Everyone left after the morning service and went out for lunch and such. After lunch, Dad swung back by the building and turned on the water flow into the baptistry; he hung around for over half an hour until it was up to a level he thought suitable for a full immersion. Then he turned on the heating coil and left to relax for a few hours. We went back a little after 4 and there was a huge puddle on the carpet in the front of the sanctuary. That old baptistry had sprung a leak! It was bad enough that he had to turn the water back on for a while to get the level back up. He did the baptism with some haste and pulled the plug. He and another fellow took snow shovels and pushed the water through the carpet and out a side door prior to the 5 o'clock service.

A month or two later the business committee set about discussing this facility problem. They went about getting estimates for a liner for the baptistry and it was going to run a couple thousand dollars, so that got nixed. The usual sort of excuses prevailed: we only have one or two baptisms a year, that's a lot of expenditure, we can just fill it immediately before a baptism and drain it right after so it won't leak much. . . To my knowledge, my brother was the last person baptized in that baptistry, about five or six years ago. And my mother told me a few days ago that he doesn't regularly go to that church anymore: he's started going to some trendy church in a bigger town in the hopes of finding a woman.

 

[Naomi4Christ]

We have a full size baptistery under the floor of our chancel. It is coffin-shaped to signify dying to self and rising to new life in Christ.

It takes half a day to heat up, so we clean and fill it on the Saturday afternoon before a baptism.

 

[PloverWing]

On a completely unrelated note, anyone here have much experience with Messy Church? I've come into a parish with a Messy Church service once a month, but it's new to me, and I'd be keen to hear other people's thoughts and experiences.

I've only just now come across this discussion. What is Messy Church?

 

[Naomi4Christ]

I've only just now come across this discussion. What is Messy Church?

It's a church service aimed at young families. It is centred around hospitality, craft and games, following the theme of the day, but will also have songs, a message and prayer.

Messy Church

 

[Paidiske]

It's often fairly loosely adapted. From what I can see, people using this sort of format are encouraged to adapt to local strengths, needs, style and so forth.

 

[gordonhooker]

Our parish has messy church once a month during school terms there is one this coming Saturday afternoon