Out From Under the Stones

I've always been able to tell people what a pacific, placid church Swanvale Halt's is. Nobody ever criticises anyone else. Well, last night we had the first sidespersons' meeting in three years; sidespeople are officially assistants to the churchwardens and, in most churches, this means getting books ready for services, welcoming people who come through the door, and keeping an eye on anyone who may need help.

I was amazed by the little rancours that have obviously been slumbering for ages! Among them were:

- the accusation that we keep running out of service leaflets. I could only remember this occurring once since I've been at S.H., but people maintained it often happened, including two weeks ago. I thought this was odd as we'd printed the usual 80 service sheets and according to the sidesperson who did the counting there were barely 70 people in the building.

- a discussion about the need to have a table in the entrance area to assemble books and leaflets on. One of the sidespeople described an extraordinary dance around the book trolley she found herself engaging in so as to avoid people coming through the door while simultaneously getting books ready for the next few. 'Well, we used to have a table', said another person, 'I had a row with Miriam Block [my predecessor] about getting rid of it. She said it was divisive'. Another longstanding church member couldn't see what the problem was.

- my favourite memory of the evening: we were going through the sidespeople's rota and the names of the two people who set up for the Taizé service came up. 'They won't do anything else', said one former churchwarden with a tone of barely-suppressed contempt, 'They came once when the services had been changed and found it wasn't Taizé and I asked whether they would help with the service and they wouldn't and left. So they won't do anything else.' It turned out this was during the chap's last stint as churchwarden, and therefore at least eleven years ago. We speak a lot of guff about the Church being 'a family', but how true it is: we nurse tiny grievances over decades, just like real families.

I find myself hugely pleased with this outbreak of minor rankling in the congregation. It's all very well slopping around words like 'love' and 'community', but it means next to nothing without a bit of grit. How can I learn seriously to love the people committed to my charge unless there are bits of us all which aren't entirely loveable?