Another Monday and contrary to the received wisdom and commentary of the world ministers work more than a Sunday. Today has started with a team meeting working out who will do what and by lunchtime 3 funerals have come into the study to be done this week. In the church there has been an ongoing debate as to whether parish funerals are something we in ministry should give so much time to. With declining membership and diminishing congregations through linkages and unions, does the church really hold the place in the lives of the people that it used to?

I don't think it ever really held sway in the way it is made out to have but when people need the church to be with them, shouldn't we be there? To simply refuse to do a parish or non-church member funeral would even further disconnect people from the church. Perhaps it is actually in times of distress that people are more open to the big questions of life and meaning, the spiritual question that everyone will have to answer within themselves at some moment in their life.

How much of Jesus' ministry was in the church and how much was in the streets or market places. Ministry is where people and gospel meet, sometimes side by side through life, sometimes head on when lives crash and stumble. I wonder if Jesus would have closed the churches and moved into the street or moved away from the streets and into the church - now there's a question!