Slept a bit better last night. Awake at 4am and read for a while but did go back to sleep for an hour. Feeling much more with it today.
Struck by the warmth of welcome of so many people who have been dropping into the church to say hello. And their helpfulness. One chap spent a couple of hours sorting out the network at church to make sure I could log on with my lap top and connect to the network printer. (Yes “network” and “network printer” phrases I haven’t heard for about 7 years since leaving the work place.)
We were taken for lunch at a little café on Main Street. And Main Street could be straight out of an archetypal small town America movie. I half expected to see Spencer Tracey getting out of a 1950s Buick. It’s not surprising that it is used for films (and part of the area was sealed off today as filming was taking place.)
But what’s interesting about Main Street Mooresville is that it has reinvented itself. Many of the shops are now art galleries and cafes. It is somewhere to relax not to shop. (People shop in the various out of town shopping malls.)
Chatting over lunch I was struck by how there are so many similar issues facing churches on both sides of the pond. Mooresville is served by 4 United Methodist Churches each with its own pastor (and one assumes team of ministers.) But we were told how one church (in a very prominent position) is facing the possibility of closure as its members are refusing to consider change. Where have we heard this before? Those 6 words guaranteed to ensure a church is doomed to die “We’ve always done it this way”
And the assumption on the British side of the pond is that American churches get it right.
To finish today off Tom and I went to see Fairview UMC softball team play another church – The Cove (http://www.covechurch.org/) Fairview’s team was made up of young and old all shapes and sizes who wanted to play for fun. The Cove’s team talk it far more seriously.
Now if people sometimes say that baseball is rounders, softball really is rounders played with a bigger bat and ball. And a softball game lasts about as long as a game of rounders, in other words much shorter than a baseball game. Which is probably just as well for Fairview lost 20 – 0. It was a bit like The Bad News Bears http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0074174/
A fun evening
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