So this morning we had the most major change in our new service pattern, the additional family service, for which all the other changes have been made.

It is probably fair to say that whilst Rev Richard put a lot of time and effort into the revamped 11am Family Eucharist service (targeted at a slightly more all-age congregation), this was the one he was most nervous about, and possibly the bigger gamble – a thirty minute Family Service of the Word at 9:30am targeted squarely at children.

I thought we should show support in the new venture, so got up somewhat before my usual wake up time for a Sunday, and arrived about 9:20am. It has to be said that on arrival things didn’t look overly hopeful – there were only two or three cars in the car park, and when I walked into the church the place was empty, and I half expected to see a tumbleweed rolling down the aisle. I then spotted a rather worried looking rector pacing up and down.

I have to say that I wasn’t massively worried about it, one observation that has frequently been made about our Family Service congregation is that they are usually pretty last minute. As neither the choir nor servers were on duty at this new service there wasn’t the usual number of people turning up early. I’m exceedingly glad to say that I was right. In the space of about ten minutes from 9:25am to 9:35am we had over 100 people come through the Church door, going from a totally empty, to a packed out Church.

The service was a simple Hymn/Prayer structure, that pretty closely followed the first part of the old Family Service. Rev Richard did a great talk to the kids, complete with puppet assistant (I did suggest bringing the puppet along to brighten up an Evensong at some point…), and the Fledgelings ‘Band Box’ was raided for cymbals, drums and so on to play during the songs. The service ran for almost exactly 30 minutes, and was followed by drinks over in the Parish Centre for which unlike normally the majority of the families went over. There were lots of positive comments, and many families saying that they would come back next month.

More than that, having the 9:30am family service and not running Sunday Club didn’t seem to affect the numbers at the 11am service, that seemed to be about normal – on a Sunday with Matins at 9:30am, there is a sometimes noticable dip in the attendance at 11am, as many people will attend Matins instead. Hopefully that is an indication that we are doing something in the new Family Service that is attracting new people, rather than splitting existing congregations. It also makes a nice counterpoint to George Carey’s opinion, reported by Ekklesia last week that the Church has “lost its vision and is becoming a club for the elderlyâ€? – whilst I’m not saying that it is easy – it seems that there is a market for fairly traditional services that attract young families without turning services into something that would be unrecognisable to people who have been members of the Church for many years.