Today I led my last assessed service at St Mark’s. I’ve had to do 2 assessed preaches and 2 assessed service leadings each year for training. The worst thing about these is finding 4 people to complete the A4 form. I have always felt the need to be very apologetic as I ask people to complete a form for me as people are coming to church to worship and did not expect to come to fill in a form and assess me. I have managed, in the main, to use different people each time which people have appreciated.

Today I led the morning service and tried some different things such as use this Captives loop from Work of the People as I read an adapted poem which led us into a time of confession. This followed an excellent talk from Graham around the subject of ‘Looking after Number 1’

But I have been amazed at the feedback for one very simple thing that we did in the service. A young woman called Claire is going on mission to New Zealand for a few months. Rather than pray for her upfront as we would normally do, I had planned to walk with her to the centre of the congregation and ask people to stand and pray for Claire from where they were.

It seems that this simple activity was profound for so many people. People afterwards spoke of a sense of Spirit, a real sense of family and community blessing Claire, one person on the assessment form refereed to it as ‘awesome’ which I was obviously both pleased with and humbled by!

This resonates with my thoughts throughout the year around my tendency to make good use of technology whenever I can, whereas I am often surprised by how powerfully people connect with God in the simple parts of the service. I had expected people to be inspired by the video and poem, and some were; but the point at which God really broke through in a tangible way for many people this morning was when we
turned to the centre of our worship space,
looked at each other,
concentrated on one of our family,
and entrusted her to God.

God in the simple!
Maybe I just try to make things too complicated sometimes!