January 7th

OK, so we're on placement again, but not quite as far as Brisbane this time! This time we're at Cambray Baptist Church in Cheltenham.
And no, don't expect daily blogs this time because we are not 10,000 miles away, experiencing the delights of a foreign country.
For those who don't know, Cheltenham is about 7 miles away from Gloucester, so we won't have to travel far at all, and will be able to stay at home (the girls are still at school.)
That said, it is a little complicated because it means travelling to and from there every time we need to do something. We hope we won't clock up 20,000 miles over the next six weeks!
We started, sort of unofficially, by attending the services on Sunday.
Cambray Baptist church is interesting because it still has the 'traditional' English Baptist chapel layout - raised church organ, balcony on three sides, raised pulpit, etc...
There are a few mod. cons. such as twin, rear-projected video screens at the front, a fancy lectern that can be raised or lowered, decent chairs downstairs and good lighting.
The morning service was a fairly traditional style Baptist service, with most of the hymns being played on the organ, the kids going out after about half an hour, and tea and coffee after the service.
The evening service was a communion service, but was strikingly different. After the first hymn, the reading was read, then we went straight into the sermon. After the sermon, we sang another hymn, listened to some notices etc, sang a song, then went into communion. This was interesting because we ate the bread together, not when we received it, sang a chorus, then drank the wine as we received it, not together. This seemed really strange to me because every Baptist church I've ever been to, as far as I can remember, does this the other way round. We then finished with a hymn. The whole thing took an hour; half for the sermon, half for communion.
I was really impressed that they had decided to change the format of the communion service, rather than try to cram everything in together or have a service that ran for another thirty minutes.
Apparently the morning service isn't usually quite so traditional, but we'll see next week what the difference is.
So, a good start, glad for a different experience, hope it continues so positively.