Icebergs in the Stream - on Baptism in Brooks

I feel, brethren (for speaking of what I am today, this need not concern the sex that is less-equipped for leadership) that I should share with you what I have learnt on the subject of brooks, and baptism therein.

For surely baptism in a brook is more challenging than in the carefully-dug well with which the Frisby Baptists have provided themselves. Even at this time of year when we have been blessed abundantly with rain, sleet and snow, and the brook therefore flows more swiftly and voluminously, like the oil upon Aaron's beard but with a lower viscosity.

But notwithstanding the added volume, and our choice of the gravelly stretch down by school lane, it was still a tricky task carrying out the baptisms. In essence, our candidates had to lay on their backs on the gravelly bed of the brook while I spooned water over them.

It is true to say that we are always blessed in our services. When they are well attended, God has blessed up with willing hearts and ears. When it is just me and the Trinity attending, I am blessed in my adversity. When the congregation's singing is half-hearted and they do not respond I am blessed in pouring myself out as a drink-offering that the undeserving might be edified.

But today I felt particularly blessed. I was delighted to see Edgar and Elinor turning their lives around, and washed clean (once we'd removed the residual water weed from them).

Maybe in the circumstances the 45-minute sermon was on the long side to be preaching outdoors. Edgar and Elinor had gone a particularly strange colour of blue by the end. Eileen and her Beaker Folk passed by as they were processing to the White Horse, and Eileen offered them a draft from her hip flask. "An old Luton remedy against the cold" she called it, so it seemed acceptable. I discovered afterwards that it was brandy. I really must have a word with Eileen - it seems reckless to go offering people ardent spirits when what they really need is the laying-on of hands for warmth. However I followed Eileen's advice that what they really needed was to be got into the Great House by the fire, with blankets, and now they seem much better.

A great morning.

In keeping with Tradition

I had been hoping to introduce the Frisby Baptist tradition of baptising outside on Christmas day. However in the circumstances, this would have been impossible. The brook had frozen solid. And so reluctantly I was forced to postpone Edgar and Elinor's baptism.

But today I looked out and beheld a clear sky, the sun shining. The perfect day for an outdoor baptism! Indeed, I spent only a couple of minutes with the blow-torch unfreezing the hinges on the chapel door. It will be a great day.

Making a way in the wilderness

It's a cold day in Husborne Crawley. And nowhere is colder than here in the little vestry of Bogwulf Baptist chapel. Unless it is the hearts of the local Council.

It was a low-key service of praise and preaching this morning. To be frank, it was just myself. And how I weep when I remember Zion. Zion Baptist Chapel, Frisby on Soar, that is. Marjorie occasionally drops me emails to let me know how well things are going, together with photographs of crowds of sinners being saved and mass-baptisms. Although I note that after the outside baptism last week, seven people were hospitalised with hypothermia.

So I opened the letter that was dropped through the letter box of the chapel yesterday morning. I would have read it yesterday, but the chapel door was frozen solid. I do not normally like to sully the Sabbath day with business, but I felt that, my application for planning permission being the Lord's work, He might overlook my minor transgressions in favour of my greater ambitions.

It has always been my belief that as Christians we can bring in the Kingdom of God in more quickly, if we but establish an outpost of it down here. Not for me the Pietist apathy and prayer-life in which nothing is achieved. And I had a vision of how I could prepare for the coming of the Lord in a way that none had done before.  But once again the Prince of the World has brought my plans to nothing. They have rejected my planning permission. I quote.

"Dear Revd Drayton Parslow

In place of the more formal standard letter, we thought it would be better to give you some explanation why we have rejected your application for planning permission for "Construction of the Way of the Lord".

The suggestion that every valley would be exalted has run up against problems on several fronts. Firstly, I should point out that the Vale of Aylesbury covers parts of Herts and Bucks as well as the Bedfordshire portions, and you would have to seek wider permission from the relevant bodies.  Secondly, the people of Eaton Bray and Tottenhoe have indicated that they would not "appreciate the improved view", liking their villages as they are. The Dunstable Downs are an area of Outstanding Natural Beauty - at least they are if you aren't looking towards Luton. They are also Green Belt. Therefore your proposal to raise up the Vale by "laying low"  the Chiltern Hills is not going to be acceptable. Likewise your alternative proposal to exalt the Ouse Valley. This will have a lesser overall impact on the landscape, but you are still going to cause severe flooding in Milton Keynes, or - as you so eloquently put it - "The Sinful City on the Plain".

We now turn to your proposed changes to the road network. You are right, the A5 is a nice straight road - the old Watling Street, indeed, and the Romans did tend to build them quite straight. So I am pleased that you are happy to leave it in its current position. However your suggestion that it should be reduced to one single lane with passing places, on the grounds that "narrow is the way that leads to salvation" would cause awful congestion in Hockliffe. And when the M1 has trouble one shudders to think where all the the traffic would go. Which brings me onto the real problem with your proposals. That the M1 be re-routed to ensure that "the crooked be made straight" would require an awful lot of work and I really don't think your budget of "treasure in heaven" is going to be much use in the current financial climate. Especially as re-directing the motorway in a straight line from Junction 6 to Husborne Crawley would require us to flatten Dunstable, which would already be suffering from the narrowing of the A5. Yes, technically knocking down Dunstable does come under  making "the rough places plain", but a lot of  people actually live there.  As for your request that we pipe vast quantities of water into your local sub-soil to create "streams in the desert" - yes, we agree that the Woburn and Husborne Crawley area is famous for its sandy soil, but Aspley Heath hardly counts as "desert" and we think  that kind of hydrological exercise would really require the involvement of Anglian Water."

So you see what I am up against. If I were a weaker man I would despair. But instead, like Elijah in the cave, I wait for the still small voice to tell me whether it is worth appealing to the Secretary of State for the Environment.

Frisby Independent Baptists

I've surely been blessed in this sudden appointment to Pastor of the Frisby Independent Baptists.

Situated in the beautiful, undulating countryside of Leicestershire, the Frisby Independent Baptist Church has been fighting the forces of modernism, liberalism and decidedly suspect Anglo-Catholicism for four centuries.

For most of the congregation's history, the converts to our particularly austere and biblically-based creed have been baptised in the well outside the chapel. But with the coming of heating, and a general dislike to being pushed into icy water in the middle of winter - all baptisms are held at Christmas - there's a growing desire amongst the congregation that we should build a baptistry. I heard all about this suggestion at my selection interview, but I'm keeping my powder dry. Partly because I've only been in the post for the last eleven hours, partly because I'm not sure whether the finances of the assembly are strong enough to bear such expense.
But mostly because I'd rather we stuck to the old way. We will not bow down to the forces of modernity, no matter how many people are struck down with pneumonia.