My average day starts at 7.30am with breakfast, Bible and prayer until I’m at my keyboard 9-5ish, Mon-Fri (with an hour’s walk in the middle – a life-giving lockdown novelty for my wife and me). Sunday is always different, COVID or not. Tasks vary from preparing content for Sunday, to governance, to pastoral calls (~20 each week, splitting “Hub leaders,” ministry leaders, and a few others with Sera). I’ll travel to the crematorium on Friday for a funeral, with attendance much-restricted. We’re putting the finishing touches on a restructured volunteer finance team, taking over from Paula’s able leadership as she moves on. Everything is experimentation, but as the rhythm emerges, we’ll keep fine-tuning and investing prayerfully into new opportunities for mission. Number of evenings meetings varies, but mostly decreasing.

Like many others, I miss the ‘zoning’ of life, as home becomes my workplace, and work/family/friends all go online. After an initial burst of contact with friends and family further away, I’ve drawn back a little, just to get away from my computer. I’m blessed with a wife I can walk with and a garden to tend. Most of all, as the uncertainty of life has never been clearer, I’ve had more motivation than ever to seek God in every decision, and He has been faithfully speaking word of comfort, reproof and guidance. I’ve been blown away by Sera’s hard work and the generosity of volunteers stepping up to  be church differently in a difficult time.