Mike's musings

Baptisms galore

Quite a day, really. I'm about to do the ironing, after a lovely 5.4km (3.34 mile) walk. That was after putting the girls to bed. We'd spent most of the after noon at Sally's post-ordination party. The girls met a 7 year old who they played with, so that was good, and it was nice to meet some of Sally's family and friends.

But it was the morning which was most interesting. It was my first "lone" Sunday, and 5 minutes before the 0800 started, I was concerned that noone was going to turn up. Luckily, 4 people turned up, which was a relief. After a 40 minute or so service, I then had well over an hour to kill before the 1000. What to do? Well, I walked down the hill to the WH Smith at the bottom of town, and bought a copy of the Observer. And on the way up, I noticed that there was a caff open. Not a café: a caff. Yes, and open caff. So, was my eating there simply an excuse for a cooked breakfast, or an opportunity for expressing my ministry of presence with parishioners? You get to decide. At least I 'fessed up.

So, after another trip to WH Smith's for some mints, I was back up to the church for our 1000 Eucharist. I do enjoy celebrating the Eucharist: it's great. And after that, we had a baptism. Well, I say _a_ baptism. I'd been told to expect 5 candidates (all children, from 4 families), and lots of family and friends. We god under way with a pretty full church, and it was only at the presentation of the candidates that I realised that there seemed to be 6 children dressed up for the occasion. I stopped and demanded a recount, and there were, in fact, 6 children, from 5 families. Luckily, we discovered the we had all the relevant paperwork, and were ready to proceed.

It was a blast. There were so many children, friends and family that half of the job was policing and traffic control. I had to restart the service and explain that the congregation needed to read out the bits in bold, or the service really wouldn't work. There was lot of children-noise, lots of adult noise, lots of photos, and lots of joy. The first candidate was a little boy who was asleep when it came to the actual baptism, but not when I poured the water over his forehead. He woke up, and cried, loudly. Which rather put the other children off. And I've never needed to raise my voice in a service whilst micced and amped up. I loved it, and had lots and lots of very positive feedback (and not from the mic-amp-speaker system). And about 270 people in the church.

Labels: baptism, curacy, eucharist, food