United

We managed to get through the Churches Together United Service on Sunday. This has customarily been held in Hornington Parish Church, as the oldest and biggest place of worship in the area, but last year there was a distinct move - for all sorts of reasons - that this tradition should be broken and the Swanvale Halt partisans managed to persuade the executive that the service, which brings together, in theory, all the churches in the area, should come here. I was sceptical to say the least. The United Service has to find space for a lot of people - not, perhaps, the 450 which legend has reported in the past, but still a good few - and enough leg room for them to move around and take communion, as well as a spot for a band. This year the young minister-in-training from the Baptist Church did the planning (in an Anglican church he'd be a curate, but they don't use that terminology) and somehow, with a lot of willingness on the part of our team to move chairs around and be flexible and responsive to whatever came up, including rushing out to buy non-alcoholic wine when we realised nobody had got any, it all happened with relative smoothness. We proved the service will work in Swanvale Halt church, that we can fit 300 or so people and everything else that needs to happen. Things could be tweaked, of course, but it worked.

That means we'll have to do it again next year.