United

It only takes a moment to volunteer for something as a generous gesture and then with it comes a tidal surge of worry. I can't remember what led me to say to the executive of Churches Together in Hornington that Yes, we could have the annual United Service at Swanvale Halt. Last year, of course, it was all online, but we wanted to do it in person this time, and so towards the end of last year I began trying to assign roles to various people, attempting to ensure a good mix of church communities, male and female voices, and things like that. 

In past years the music provision has constituted a knotty issue. Customarily a group of musicians from churches across the town has 'emerged' and wanted a degree of input into what ends up being used in the service; a negotiation has ensued between them and whoever is organising the event until a consensus has been reached. Some years it's harder than others. This year I was assured that there were musicians out there, but nobody felt they were in a position to organise them, so in the end I fell back on the boring but reliable option of using one of our organists.

We do the service this time of year because it falls within the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity. Churches Together in Britain and Ireland issues a set of liturgical resources which this year were devised by the Council of Churches of the Middle East. You can't use the whole lot because you'd be there all morning, but they help. I decided to project an appropriate image of the Visit of the Magi rather than get our Crib back out of the loft again, and thought it would be nice to play St Ephrem's Hymn to the Divine Light from the Syriac liturgy, one of the pieces included: that would help us reflect on the circumstances and experiences of the ancient Christian Churches of the Middle East. Nice ideas but requiring fiddling with laptops, projectors, screens and iPods: these are antique tech these days but do the trick provided they work. And there's the rub.

It was all fine. Lots of people came, Simon the organist caused me more nail-biting by uncharacteristically only turning up ten minutes before kick-off but he was there, Revd Alan from the United Reformed Church preached movingly on 'Light from the East', and nothing went wrong. That's all one can hope for at the moment.