Reverend Ref +

CH . . . CH . . . CH . . . CHANGES

It's been a busy day around quaint Christ Church. I received word last week that work will begin this week on replacing our dead furnace. A crew was out this morning pulling the dead monstrosity from the basement. At last look, they were waiting for the new furnace to be delivered. Of course, they had been waiting since noon and it was about 2:30 the last time I saw them hanging around the churchyard. But work has commenced! That's good news.

This means that the new furnace will be in and running in time for the bishop's visitation in two weeks. That makes everyone happy. From the parishioners who love their building, to the baptismal candidates who weren't all that excited about being baptized in the parish hall, to me because I hate being cold.

And, as long as we are at it, I managed to get a parishioner and his son to come down and pull the altar away from the reredos. For the orthodox out there, we have now gone from an east facing altar to one in a dubious and heretical position. Get over it. This now means that the sacraments will now be the focus of attention during the Eucharist and not my back.

But this wasn't without problems. The altar and reredos were connected. So we moved them out and disconnected the two. We moved the reredos back against the wall and the altar to the front of the step. We discovered two things. First, it was now necessary to anchor the reredos to the wall. The possibility that it might fall over and kill the bishop was slim, but I didn't want to take that chance.

Second, there's a 7' x 3' x 6" hole where the altar used to be. Don't ask what was down there -- it was icky. Our assumption is that, originally, there was a different altar there and the one we have now replaced it at some point in the past. The reredos is anchored so it won't kill the bishop. Next item on the agenda is to cover that hole so that he doesn't break his leg back there.

Yes, it's been a full day.