Children's address

I was away from Hillside kirk today, instead taking the children's address at the kirk up the road.  The minister of up the road is my presbytery rep for the enquiry process, and he suggested I come along, partly to see the place, and partly to get experience doing things in other churches.

Now I'm not too bothered about talking to children, having been one once myself.  My main concern is that I'm one of the first people that has discussed the Gospel with them, so I had better be sure that what I'm telling them is correct.  So make sure I've got the lesson clear in my own head.  And make sure I've got all the possible avenues they can go down covered. For example, it's all very well talking about Shrove Tuesday and ash Wednesday, but if they ask why it's called Ash Wednesday, then I need to have an answer.  So know the topic well.

The other thing was the level of the talk.  I had a great idea for a talk earlier in the week, but I felt it would have went over there heads when I started writing it down, so I left it to do as a sermon at a later date, or perhaps with a group of children that I know better.

My final thing is that I feel the need to write a script down.  I need to have the talk written out beforehand, in full.  While I only referred to it a couple of times, and even then just to remind me of a couple of key points, and what the next hymn was.  I’ll probably distil it down to bullet points for the next time. 

So it went well. 

This week is going to be a bit of an odd one.  A real university level essay to do, the sermon for next week, my second PDI meeting, a brew with Nik* and a job interview. 

*Edit to say. The brew in question will be odd because it's immediately post PDI!