Ministry is often days spent pondering the strange conversations and comments that glance across ears.

Three days since Easter today was full of promise, even with the perpetual rain that has fallen since the Bank holiday. It was supposed to begin with a coffee with a colleague. The afternoon had plans for a pastoral visit. Unfortunately neither activity happened. The coffee companion never appeared and I remain in the dark about what it was they had invited me to coffee for. The afternoon visit got no further than a thought as a phone call and no answer phone to hear my voice meant that I could not say I was hoping to visit. Instead I have used the afternoon to write a reference.

In the midst of those, I popped into the church. I thought Easter had gone well. We had a lovely busy church, and lots of families and children. There was a baptism, and after a full morning those who had been at the communion after the main service had stopped to say how much they had enjoyed the day and it had been lovely to have a baptism. There had been a bit of discussion about why there were not so many boys being baptised, but I can’t control that.

We all know you can’t please everyone, so on my visit to the building today I was captured by a member to be told that the service would have been better without the baptism. In fact they felt that having a baptism on Easter Day took away from Easter because the day is supposed to be about Jesus. Instead it had been about a baby.

There are days when it is best just to listen. One day in a magazine letter I might ponder the Sacrament of Infant Baptism and how Christ is present in the sacrament. That the sacrament is about the welcoming of new life and incorporation into the body of Christ. But today I accepted that whatever I said would be wrong, because you know I don’t think carefully about anything we do as a church.

I’m adding this comment on baptism to the other one I had a lot longer ago about not having more than one baptism on a Sunday. In another parish, it would not have been unusual for there to be two or maybe three baptisms within a service. There I was told that this meant that the baby and the family did not have their special day. I might have suggested that these were not mini weddings.

Both views place the importance on the child and the family, and not the presence of Christ and the call to tell his story in as many ways as we can. The call to include all within the embrace of God.