Tuesday, January 03, 2006
Jimmy's Thoughts
OK. My thoughts.
Item 1. It seems to me that one of the things God is doing, or at the very least guiding me towards at the moment, is a greater degree of “joined-up” church. Not unifying or anything as dangerously radical as that (!) but more of an emphasis on the fact that rather than existing as separate bodies, we are primarily different expressions of the same thing. And the challenge is how to deal with that without losing any of the things that makes our own little church communities unique and individual.
Response. If we take this seriously as something that God is taking us towards then obviously there is nothing we can do except go with it. No plan B and all that. Where God’s calling us to, we want to go to and be part of. So lets do it is my initial reaction.
Item 2. - aWAKENING’s part in this whole deal. I think that aWAKENING is a definite part of this guiding. I think the fact that community was one of the big things that cropped up in the debrief session is important. I think that developing as community that is unified is important. (I think there’s more to it than just aWAKENING, but that I guess is for another time/place to discuss and develop.)
Response. How do we actually go about doing it? Well I think on one level we need to just jump into doing it, we need to be careful about not over thinking it. I believe Gods calling us onto this, and that’s all we ultimately need. Of course we need to think how we do it best/professionally/optimally etc but I think the first thing to do is to get going with it. To put on the first of the new wave events, to use that as an opportunity to cast the vision, for the bee’s to do their little waggle dance to show the other bees where the good stuff’s at! We need to have a skeleton structure to build on, we need to have vision to hold on to guide us through the (inevitable?) rough patches we will go through as this thing gets going, but we also need to have the flexibility to take it where God wants us to.
Summary of thoughts.
Man, its exciting. The possibilities are great. Its taking us forward, as Christians in Berko and Northchurch, and as individual churches. I like the fact that its different, not just another soul survivor/vineyard rip-off/clone. My only concern - and I don’t mean that as a negative, I mean it as something that I think is of huge importance - is the question of who we get to organise/run it. I think this, more than anything else, requires much prayer on our part.
Item 1. It seems to me that one of the things God is doing, or at the very least guiding me towards at the moment, is a greater degree of “joined-up” church. Not unifying or anything as dangerously radical as that (!) but more of an emphasis on the fact that rather than existing as separate bodies, we are primarily different expressions of the same thing. And the challenge is how to deal with that without losing any of the things that makes our own little church communities unique and individual.
Response. If we take this seriously as something that God is taking us towards then obviously there is nothing we can do except go with it. No plan B and all that. Where God’s calling us to, we want to go to and be part of. So lets do it is my initial reaction.
Item 2. - aWAKENING’s part in this whole deal. I think that aWAKENING is a definite part of this guiding. I think the fact that community was one of the big things that cropped up in the debrief session is important. I think that developing as community that is unified is important. (I think there’s more to it than just aWAKENING, but that I guess is for another time/place to discuss and develop.)
Response. How do we actually go about doing it? Well I think on one level we need to just jump into doing it, we need to be careful about not over thinking it. I believe Gods calling us onto this, and that’s all we ultimately need. Of course we need to think how we do it best/professionally/optimally etc but I think the first thing to do is to get going with it. To put on the first of the new wave events, to use that as an opportunity to cast the vision, for the bee’s to do their little waggle dance to show the other bees where the good stuff’s at! We need to have a skeleton structure to build on, we need to have vision to hold on to guide us through the (inevitable?) rough patches we will go through as this thing gets going, but we also need to have the flexibility to take it where God wants us to.
Summary of thoughts.
Man, its exciting. The possibilities are great. Its taking us forward, as Christians in Berko and Northchurch, and as individual churches. I like the fact that its different, not just another soul survivor/vineyard rip-off/clone. My only concern - and I don’t mean that as a negative, I mean it as something that I think is of huge importance - is the question of who we get to organise/run it. I think this, more than anything else, requires much prayer on our part.
Over to you... interactivity
OK. This is where it gets interactive (hopefully).
You should have received an email inviting you to join the blog site so you can add comments and post on here as well, and hopefully I’m going to email you all anyway to remind you to try and do this at some point soon. But let me suggest a way we can do this…
We need to take this forward now. And we need to shake the Christmas holiday dust out of our heads and think seriously about what we think God is calling us to do here. And I think we can start off with this by each setting out in an individual post what we think we got out of the aWAKENING away day, what we think God was saying abut the future, and any actions you think we need to take (and when as well if possible!)
I’ll start I guess…
You should have received an email inviting you to join the blog site so you can add comments and post on here as well, and hopefully I’m going to email you all anyway to remind you to try and do this at some point soon. But let me suggest a way we can do this…
We need to take this forward now. And we need to shake the Christmas holiday dust out of our heads and think seriously about what we think God is calling us to do here. And I think we can start off with this by each setting out in an individual post what we think we got out of the aWAKENING away day, what we think God was saying abut the future, and any actions you think we need to take (and when as well if possible!)
I’ll start I guess…
Challenges of doing church
Challenges of doing church
Challenges/Problems faced
How often?
4 month cycle? 3 month?
Termly
Theme months - Meal and speaker (tickets)
Fellowship meal
Bring and share
Alpha style – after dinner talk
Extras
Band night
Sex – with Dan and meal (snigger)
Riding lights
Glossy leaflets
2nd/3rd week each month
7-9pm
To do…
Challenges/Problems faced
- Lack of leadership
- Small number of people + much to do
- Resources
- Team
- Identifying leaders
- Core people
How often?
4 month cycle? 3 month?
Termly
Theme months - Meal and speaker (tickets)
- Prayer event, creative, team, worship
- Teaching and group work
Fellowship meal
Bring and share
Alpha style – after dinner talk
Extras
Band night
Sex – with Dan and meal (snigger)
Riding lights
Glossy leaflets
2nd/3rd week each month
7-9pm
To do…
- Set programme
- Dates
- Themes
- Teams
- Accountability
- Training and support
- Drawing in older people – women: cakes (not sexist or owt…)
- Draw up younger people… list?
