It’s been a while since I have had an opportunity to write anything other than preparing for a variety of worship services. In a parish where I have become used to very few funerals, I have now had a number which matches the number of weeks since the beginning of the year. Of course one a week is not a particularly great number – this I know from personal experience in a previous parish, but funerals tend not to come at a rate of one per week. Instead you get a group together with a clear week either side.

The extra services for Holy Week and Easter contributed to the overwhelming of life and only today do I sense a return to normality within our house as the chores begin to be sorted.

These things are good things though, and have no relevance to the title of this post. Funerals are something that I enjoy. A strange word to use perhaps. But funerals are an important part of connecting with people, whether it be the congregation or the parish. They offer and opportunity to engage with the history of a person, a family, and a community. And in listening and learning from others we inform our own lives and relationships.

Last Sunday afternoon I was able to say that although I was tired it had been a good and worthwhile Holy Week and Easter. The week ahead offers at least three funerals, with a fourth yet to be fixed in date.

Cold customers are what I encountered in worship today. I was off visiting a different congregation, and it just felt wrong. There were those keen to offer a welcome, and at the end some nice comments. Yet in the midst if worship, there was little physical response to worship.

Now I am minister of a fairly straight-laced, traditional congregation. We don’t really do exuberance or laughter, or even public encouragement – however tells joke and you see a smile, stir an emotion and there is a nod if the head, speak comforting words and bodies relax.

The congregation I visited today has a similar socio-mix, although a very different setting. I thanked them for my welcome, and they sat straight; I told a few jokes and they sat straight; taught them a new hymn and still nothing.

Once upon a time this might have phased me, but today I smiled and kept going. I wasn’t preaching as their minister, or to be their minister, I was there because of a family connection and I took the opportunity to enjoy the family history.

However thank goodness for “call”, for God’s Spirit is what brought me to my current congregation and warmed our hearts that we might connect in worship. It will be that same Spirit that at some time might take me somewhere new, with fresh hearts to warm with the possibility of God in our midst.