Are you sitting comfortably?

Have you heard the story about Goldilocks and the church?  

A woman named Goldilocks goes for a walk on a Sunday morning trying to find a church to join. To her delight she comes upon a beautiful looking church building which she enters and joins the service that’s just starting. But the worship style is too formal for her taste - with liturgy and hymns she doesn’t know - and she doesn’t enjoy it. She tries another service, but the sung worship style feels too loud and repetitive, and she doesn’t like it. She tries another service and this one feels just right.

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I need reading glasses. I’m finally admitting it.

Presbyobia - to give it the correct name - comes to us all in time, as our eye muscles age and we can no longer manage the amazing and unconscious feat of switching back and forth from near to long vision.

So, for me, it’s now a choice of lifting the long-distance glasses off my face to peer at the smartphone or putting on a pair of reading glasses if I’ve got my contact lenses in. I can hear the wonderful world of varifocal contact lenses beckoning me to try them out!

This new world of ever-changing lenses, had me musing on the many lenses church administrators must look through. Seeing far ahead in our work is second nature. Every administrator plans for long-term room hires/ wedding bookings / church weekends away / building projects. There’s a long and varied list of things that require long-range vision, and we’re often seeing things at least 6- 12 months ahead of our congregation.   

That said – hands up anyone who’s had to look at an immediate need in front of them this week? Many of us will be stepping in with last-minute service planning when rota gaps appeared last night, or when ‘'extra notices’ need to be slipped in with almost no notice at all?

Administrators operate with long distance and near focus on such a daily basis that we’re experts in it, using those ‘administrator muscles’ to switch our focus without even being aware of it.

But are we doing the same spiritually, and with as much ease l wonder?