Unanswered questions at Pentecost

I woke up at a quarter to seven, not aware of having a particularly restless night, but when I checked my Fitbit record later in the day, I found that I'd lost an hour and a half sleep. No wonder the morning felt like an uphill experience. I was on my way to St Peter's to celebrate and preach just after nine. There was a congregation of nearly sixty, including fifteen children and forty communicants. By way of contrast, sad to say, there were nineteen adults at St Luke's almost all over fifty and no children. 

There was no organist and no server to assist, so no incense, although the sacristan did prepare the communion elements, and the customised service sheets for the day weren't given out, nor the individual candles this called for. The duty steward hadn't been briefed I guess, so we sang the usual service unaccompanied without embellishments, much to my relief, as I didn't think we needed this add-on anyway. It all worked the way it was intended to and despite initial nervousness, I think people went away in a good mood.

I chatted with Marion afterwards, widow of a missionary priest in Africa. She was concerned about the need to plan a 'back to church Sunday' initiative with individual churchgoers inviting lapsed members to return to an act of worship on a special Sunday. She's aware of people who stopped attending as they felt let down by the dearth of personal pastoral care from clergy, not to mention changes in timing and forms of worship, probably not aware that the biggest change is the shortage of parochial clergy, now obliged to spend an excessive amount of time on funerals and parish administration. 

Will it ever be possible to get back to where we were when we were all much younger. So many people still say their prayers at home, but are lost to public worship. Covid is blamed for breaking the habit, but this trend developed long before, when telly, sports and Sunday leisure activities gave people a choice about what they do on the Lord's Day. How do we enable people to re-engage with the church when they don't understand how far reaching the changes of the past decade have been for Christian ministry and mission?

This conversation prompted me to think about how to raise a pastoral discussion about this by means of social media. How it is possible to enable the actual voices of estranged believers to be heard on their terms, before we attempt to respond to them, or invite them to a church social event or act of worship. Are the faithful remnant of churchgoers capable of listening and responding to what they're told and make the effort to change? An interesting question on Pentecost Sunday.

After lunch, I finished and uploaded this week's prayer video to YouTube, then slept for an hour before going for a walk. I was surprised to find that it was seven fifteen when I returned home for supper. Then we watched an interesting edition of Antiques Roadshow, followed by a tribute to Aussie satirist Barrie Humphreys and six sixty year career as his comic alter egos Dame Edna Everage and Sir Les Patterson in which he mocked bourgeoise pretensions and social values in a hilarious but edgy way, which could leave his audience on the verge of feeling unsettled. Very clever acid wit, unrivalled in modern theatre. A most interesting life.