Seymour, Nagambie and Yea

July 19, 2009 (click on pics for larger view)

Happy birthday to me, happy birthday to me! Yes I know it is utterly self indulgent to mention my own birthday, but on the day I tried to keep it quiet until my wife mentioned it to Rob Myors, the Home Missionary, and he then led the congregation in singing Happy Birthday over lunch which I have to admit I rather enjoyed. 45 years old and still counting!

We didn't visit Nagambie on this ocassion, although we have driven through it a number of times now, on various visits to the Benalla Presbytery. It is a beautiful little town with its magnificent lake and a rather nice ice cream van that sits on the grass verge beside the main road. We've only sampled its wares once, honest.

It wasn't really necessary to head up the road on the Saturday evening, particularly as we had a little bbq party at home over lunch that day to celebrate my upcoming birthday and also to say farewell to my oldest daughter Eilidh who was about to head off to Queensland for a 6 month work placement. Seymour is only about 1hr 20min drive away and the service wasn't untill 11am, so we could have stayed at home and driven up in the morning. However, I much prefer to be properly relaxed on a Sunday morning, without hassling to get everybody out the house by a certain deadline and then worrying about whether we're going to make it on time, or risking some traffic problem, so I took the decision that we'd kick our guests out at a reasonable hour and motor up the road and stay in a Seymour motel on Saturday night.

At the motel I was asked one of the strangest questions I've been asked as a minister. While we were booking in, the proprietor asked what we were coming to town for and I explained that I'd be preaching in the local Presbyterian church the following morning. "Oh" she said, "do you do that often?"

I'm used to questions like, "Did you always want to be a minister?" or the most common reaction to the confession that you're a minister is that it kills any further conversation, but I don't think I've ever been asked before whether I "do it often". A short while later, when I went back to hand in our breakfast order, we had an interesting conversation about the local church scene, which she clearly knew nothing about but was willing to find out.

Anyway, I guess I should report on the congregational visits... that's why we were there after all.

Rob had organised to have a joint service in Seymour, to include the Nagambie congregation, followed by lunch. Seymour is now the second church where I processed in behind a piper, the other being Numurkah, and the lunch tables were spread with tartan cloths. Apparently it used to be normal practice to welcome a moderator in such fashion, but I wonder whether the Scotishness of it all is related generally to the Scottish heritage of Presbyterianism, or whether more specifically it was rolled out just for Scottish moderators?

I preached on 1 John 1, a sermon that has had a few outings recently, but I felt compelled to ditch the opening illustration which was based on football, when I realised that the congregation was mostly elderly ladies. Maybe I do them a disservice, maybe they're all great footy fans, but I just felt that it might not connect with them so I went with a different intro, which ended up producing a very different sermon altogether!

After lunch we went to Yea, where I reverted to the original sermon, which you can find a summary of in the Tatura report.

It is clear that these three parishes have a range of challenges in front of them, not least of all because there really are no children, youth or young adults involved in any of them and the number are very small, especially at Nagambie and Seymour. There is also a shortage of elders with currently only two at Nagambie, although the Yea parish is moving towards the election of a new elder very soon.