Old Mr Grace

A very rare morning finds me without an entry in my diary apart from morning prayers. Prayers finished I bump into two worthy gentleman fixing the light bulbs in the hall... both volunteers we have a happy time working as a team. Them doing the work and me telling them what a good job they are doing basically. I often feel that my job is like young Mr Grace in “Are you being served.” He used to come in at the end of the episode with his famous catchphrase: “"You've all done very well!”
I have been a lot of thinking about volunteers recently; it’s so easy to forget that most of the people I work with are basically pursuing their hobby. Or is that it? Most of my thinking about volunteers has focussed on them. Maybe I need to think about what it means to be paid.
We had the entrepreneurs event on Monday and what was striking about many of them was that they saw their work as what they did and that if they made money it was a bonus. Perhaps we, and by that I mean I am too hooked up on the paid thing... work is work whether we are paid or not. Maybe we need to find ways to value what we do which don’t relate to whether we are paid or not.
Hmmn, I need to do some thinking about that.

As for now I just want to say: “"You've all done very well!!”

Given that's what he said how appropriate it was that he was called "Mr Grace."

circle of life

As another thirteen hour Sunday draws to a close I find myself as taxi for the youth groups ten pin bowling. They are a small but really nice group of the young people every other organization forgot or at least lost touch with. Most of our current batch are church goers as well so I guess in all departments they are a bit odd.
It's been a busy day, highlights of which included a mad rendition of with jesus in the boat at cragg and holding baby lucy at mytholmroyd.
Tomorrow I will, with help conduct the funeral of Emily Foster one of my older members... Thus completing in a kind of circle of life thing something rather wholesome.
What it is to be part of a community.

new for old for new for old

Today I have been investigating potential furnishing changes at cragg... as we move towards a more concrete discussion about reordering the church.
We have quite an anomaly at Cragg in that we have the original font for the church. It's being used as a bird bath! We wonder if "modernising" the church might involve bringing the old back. We also want to remove the late victorian additions to restore the early victorian / late georgian box. We might take out the organ, a late victorian addition.
To make it modern we need to go back to an older state. An aweful lot of modernisation is a turning back of the clock.
I am now sat in another very boring meeting about safeguarding children... waiting for it to finish.