A Long Run In

I was sat next to the minister of One Accord Church in Hornington at the induction of the new minister of the town's Baptist Church. Ultimately, and interestingly, even within this Nonconformist setting there are shadows of Catholicity, as it were. There's not much in the way of obvious ceremony but there is ritual of a bare and unadorned kind, the shaking of hands and making of promises, which all go to recognise that the minister is both sent by a body wider than the local church, and called by it. Some fellow from the regional Baptist structure administers the promises to the new minister, to the elders of the church, and the congregation as a whole, all of whom bob up and down exactly as they would in an Anglican service.

It was the length that caught me out rather than the form or the style. At one point a representative of the minister's former church described what she'd done there; the secretary of Hornington Baptist gave an account of how they'd recruited her; and she herself then went through the process from her own viewpoint. Each of these speeches took some time. The church secretary recounted how the church had set up the 'search committee' and who was on it, and how they'd looked up the manual how to recruit a new minister on the Baptist Church national website. They were given a list of fourteen potential ministers, she said, 'and they were ...' and I thought, My goodness, she's going to read the whole list. I had visions of a kind of Baptist version of that bit from Father Ted where Mrs Doyle tries to guess the name of the Presbytery's new house-guest and lists the name of every priest in Ireland: 'Father Pigling Bland! Father Dermot MacGaslight! Father Shaughnessy O'Bastard!' But no, the secretary just went on 'and they were a huge variety.' Sigh of relief breathed.

We stumbled out into the chilly February afternoon after two hours, the minister of One Accord and I. I will sit at the next Anglican induction service I go to, listen to a bishop give a leetle leetle sermon, hear the awkward words of welcome to the new priest from various community representatives, the clanking of church keys and the ringing of the bell, and feel myself to be in the antechamber of paradise itself.