Sunday 15th June - St Chad's Family Worship

I was a bit sorry not to get to church this weekend. We had a flying visit to see my Aunt in Sevenoaks who is over 90. She does very well, but doing a few jobs for her meant that there was not time to get along to St Nicholas - the church where I came to faith getting on for 35 years ago!

However, I get get down to St Chad's the Sunday before and attended their Family Service. The theme was Father's Day and I was very impressed with the way Matthew drew out the joys and difficulties of being a Dad from the congregation and I was very touched to receive some chocolate towards the end of the service!

The thing that struck me most was how little we sang. We had a children's song, sung to a CD (which worked well), quite a few minutes into the service, then two songs after the talk and a hymn at the end. I wondered if this was a deliberate policy as visitors are far less used to singing these days. The two songs and hymn were led by a small band consisting of keyboard, rhythm guitar (played by a Scouter in uniform) and drums (played by a Scout) - they made a good sound and drove the songs with energy. I would have liked to have sung more!

The talk was quite long, but felt interactive as Matthew drew the answers out from us and the key points all came up on the screen from the video projector. It was based around four points about the way children should love their fathers and four points about the way fathers should love their children, both spelling the word LOVE. The fathers and children who were there together were encourage to tell each other that they loved each other (too much for one teenager near me, but her dad did rise to the challenge!). Children were also able to nominate people for the Dad of the year award which was duly presented at the end of the service.

In the notices we heard about St Chad's wonderful campaign to brighten up Woodseats by growing Sunflowers. Now that the plants were growing a bit, canes were being issued with brightly coloured balls to go on the top - these can be seen outside the church house on Abbey Lane.