Being Welcomed

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I've been in England for the past week, staying with old family friends. On Sunday they walked me to a nearby Anglican church so that I could go to the morning service. (They go to a Catholic church in the area). Here's what the experience was like:

I went to the Church of the Good Shepherd, in Carchalton Beeches. I walked up to the door, and the vicar was standing there greeting a family, congratulating them on something, a new baby I think but it wasn't my conversation so I wasn't really listening. I tried to sneak past without interupting them, but he immediately turned to me and welcomed me and asked where I was from, because he knew I wasn't a member of his parish, and asked about why I was over from Australia, and then took me inside and found someone, a girl roughly my age called Sophie, to look after me. And after the service he thanked me for visiting and asked about the rest of my trip and said I'd always be welcome to drop in again.

It was really nice. And I did initially think, 'well, the church is a lot smaller so it's not surprising he picked me out as a newcomer.' And partly that was true, but there were still 89 people there on Sunday (I counted), and I'd be reasonably confident he knew every single one of them. And I think the point was more that he didn't stop at welcoming me but made sure I was looked after, and searched me out afterwards to invite me to stay for tea and biscuits, and those kind of extra things.

Yeah. Gave me a bit to ponder. I guess I think about the differences between services a lot because I seem to visit so many different churches. Mostly in the positive. I like to pick out the good things and try to work out how they'd be reproducable at St. Hils.

Anyway. Might add more about the actual service later, but running out of internet time...