Thursday, June 14, 2007

In or out

Interesting evening last night. I was stationed outside the main door of our church for the Episcopal Visitiation (with Bishop John - and Bishop Alan so a whole chess-set's worth of bishops!) to direct all the churchwardens for hald the archdeaconry of Bucks through the WEST door in order to prevent a churchwarden pile-up in the rush to sign official documents, get service sheets, the best seats etc. As our church is in the town centre, there were of course not only those people coming down our churchyard driveway but also quite a few other people heading in to town for the evening. At first it amused me but after a while it did slightly worry me that there was NO DIFFICULTY AT ALL in distinguishing churchwardens from those using the town centre for recreation. I thought it was rather a sad indictment of our churches and their communities in a way. It was a great relief when my friend Dave and his wife came down the path as he IS a churchwarden and is decidedly under the age of 40 which is the first churchwarden I've ever known be so young!

1 comment:

Unknown said...

Well there is another young Churchwarden (well Churchwarden elect until 25th when we have our visitation) over here. But certainly it is a radical shift for St James to have someone in their thirties doing the job.

It certainly has it's problems - more with expectations based on the previous wardens though. The issues we're currently working through with my having been elected Churchwarden is that I've got a full time job - so various of the committees that have been meeting on a weekday afternoon have had to be changed.

We're also splitting out jobs that my predecesor does because he's around during the day from the actual Churchwarden jobs.