Missing: the children’s talk

Abstract

"Retirement brings all sorts of opportunities, apart from the obvious ones. When I retired recently, my wife and I decided that we would take a few months to visit various churches before deciding where we would become members. (Though staying in the same area, we were absolutely clear that there was no way we could continue in the church of which I had been pastor.) All those people—good friends with whom I had shared many a ministers’ fellowship meeting—what did they actually do on Sundays? How did they go about things? How did they preach? How did they lead worship? What amazing innovations, what daring experiments, what radical ideas, was I going to find?"