Church services

Church this morning at the Baptists, the place where Celia used to go as a child. It was already up and running when we arrived, with an older guy leading the singing, which was buzzing along. He sat down around the time they were due to start, and someone else took over. The service went along well, with lots of good singing interspersed with notices and comments about a group from the church who’d gone to Calcutta and were working with children there for a time. There were prayers for older people in the church including one who’d fallen and another who’d had a stroke, and we were feeling good about the place. And then a younger girl led some more worship and wound up with one or two of those very uninspiring songs that have no melody and words strung together from a concordance. This rather dulled the mood, and then the guy who’d talked about the people in Calcutta got up again and began to preach. He turned out to be the pastor of the place, and sadly, he gave a very downbeat and rather longwinded message. It was about Gideon ostensibly, but brought in depression and lack of faith, and feeling a waste of space, and various other similar things, and then got repetitive and got Gideon confused with Joshua and in general sounded unprepared. It was like one of those Pentecostal messages that used to turn up when we were at the Assembly of God and which sounded as though they were made up on the spot. Usually the Holy Spirit got the credit for the words, but unfortunately He was probably off doing something else at the time.
So we came away feeling less positive about the place than we’d started. And there was no one still in the church who’d been in the place when Celia was there. She did find one older couple who remembered some of the people she knew, but that wasn’t quite so satisfactory as actually being remembered.
Tonight we went to the Sheringham Carnival Combined Church Service on the beach front. There were quite a lot of people there, and the Sally Army band came in with a whiz and a bang and got things moving. Good singing, and a great band. Even three SA women doing a timbrel thing - kind of dancing on the spot and waving and banging the instrument around in synchronisation. They were very good: did it all with an ease and confidence that was delightful. And then, I’m afraid, our friend from the morning turned out to be the preacher again. Oh, dear. Down went the mood of the service with a thud as he moved from the real floods in England to Noah’s Flood to a Flood of Rebellion that was flooding across England. No mention of the people getting together to celebrate, no joy in the wondrous sea throbbing alongside us, no excitement about the people of God actually still functioning, and functioning confidently in the country. Nope, only doom and gloom. Some people just don’t know the right thing to say at a time of celebration. Maybe the guy’s in the Jeremiah mould and finds it hard to uplift.
On the other hand, we went for a long walk along the front and into the lifeboat museum this afternoon. Now that was good.