A nice full Sunday !
Am we were a good number. I preached on Ephesians 2:19 - >, on the church being God's nation, God's household. I'd fretted a bit about this beforehand because it is a really important theme here in France where for all sorts of reasons it is hard to build community and cohesion among the people of God.
We had a couple of technical hiccups - for some reason the powerpoint of the hymns didn't fit entirely on the screen, so for some of the words people were left to their imaginations. Still...
Some folks came back for lunch - suddenly. What can we feed them ? So it was that people dined on sweet and sour pork, quiche, pizza, rice, chips and grated carrot. (We ought to plan this in advance, shouldn't we.)
I ran round like a headless chicken assessing our stocks of ice-cream (low) and anything else that could serve as dessert when I remembered that we had inherited 18 litres of milk from a cancelled young people's outing and that we had a fair amount of small, tubiform pasta. Yes ! Macaroni pudding here we come ! With the addition of our entire stock of sugar (except the cubes) and a small amount of dessicated coconut a very filling dessert was quickly obtained ! (Hint - you need less pasta than you think...)
For the evening International service we again met round the tables with tea and infusions flowing freely. We sang extremely well - folks learned some of the songs so quickly with no accompaniment, I preached quietly on Isaiah 53:6 and we spent some time in discussion and prayer before closing the evening. I counted 18 people - I'd printed 15 hymn sheets !
In January these evenings had become so low in numbers that I wondered whether they were serving any useful purpose. You wouldn't have said that about this Sunday, though, thankfully !
We had a couple of technical hiccups - for some reason the powerpoint of the hymns didn't fit entirely on the screen, so for some of the words people were left to their imaginations. Still...
Some folks came back for lunch - suddenly. What can we feed them ? So it was that people dined on sweet and sour pork, quiche, pizza, rice, chips and grated carrot. (We ought to plan this in advance, shouldn't we.)
I ran round like a headless chicken assessing our stocks of ice-cream (low) and anything else that could serve as dessert when I remembered that we had inherited 18 litres of milk from a cancelled young people's outing and that we had a fair amount of small, tubiform pasta. Yes ! Macaroni pudding here we come ! With the addition of our entire stock of sugar (except the cubes) and a small amount of dessicated coconut a very filling dessert was quickly obtained ! (Hint - you need less pasta than you think...)
For the evening International service we again met round the tables with tea and infusions flowing freely. We sang extremely well - folks learned some of the songs so quickly with no accompaniment, I preached quietly on Isaiah 53:6 and we spent some time in discussion and prayer before closing the evening. I counted 18 people - I'd printed 15 hymn sheets !
In January these evenings had become so low in numbers that I wondered whether they were serving any useful purpose. You wouldn't have said that about this Sunday, though, thankfully !
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