Office outreach

The office carol service went well today, with approx 65 present (of which 10 were part of the 'team'). We managed to involve some of the office Christians that don't attend our weekly prayer meeting. The Chief executive - who is a Christian - did the opening prayer. Everything good.

The PA system which I borrowed from my old church worked perfectly well, though it was a bit awkward having to go into the building again. Inevitably, the vicar was in the welcome area, and again turned on the charm in the hope of winning me back. He is very good at this, though standing back and looking at it from a more distant perspective, he is actually quite manipulative. He manages to get you to agree to things, and then you walk away wondering why you agreed to such a bad deal. On top of that I find it very difficulat to say 'no' to people, and find it hard to give people bad news to their face. So, although I was supposed to be telling him that my wife and I don't want to attend his meeting in mid January, all I got out of him was a guarantee that we won't be outnumbered there. He also conned me into keeping the church keys for now, and tried to pursuade me to keep attanding events. BUt I know his game - it is all attempts to try to keep me attached to the church.

Meanwhile, Mrs was at one of the loacal play areas (not the one referred to in my previous post) meeting some of the mums from the local Baptist church. Not surprisingly, in that location, she also met a few mums form our old church too - ones we have no contention with and who have in fact been very supportive. It was good to be able to put our side of the story to them, becasue they are still in the churhc reche and can see all of the changes but don't know the background. It's comforting to know from them that the changes brought in by the new people don't seem to be very popular. But that doesn't really help. They still deserve a good creche, and for their sake we would rather the new people do something good. But anyway - Mrs is convinced that there is no way that she can go back to that church. I think maybe, if the new sunday school superintendant and his daughter leave the church, together with the assistant minister, and if Mrs was officially comissioned to rebuild the creche, then it might be possible. But none of that is going to happen.