aWAKENING

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.

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…

Challenges of doing church

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?

Issue of Community

• Belonging is at the heart

• Safe place

• Programme focus, not people focus?!


• Focus on micro, not macro


• About being, not doing

• Reachout – all had own team

• Support – pastoral. Will they come again? Feel as if needs met?

• Breaking down barriers

• Community in teams

• Attitude

• Expectations?

• Commitment?

• Loved

• Organic


• buy into it, 2way process

• Be(e) church

• Difficult

• Town full of people going for God

• Building bridges


• Creating opportunities for individuals to mix


• Teaching


• Challenge


• More opportunities for things to happen


• Encourage!


• Service – corporate demonstrations -  but needs to happen outside of aWAKENING eg Reachout/Social/Ashlyns etc


• Prayer Triplets/ Prayer Breakfast


• Casting Vision

Big Questions/thoughts that arose out of our observations on aWAKENING and prayers

Vision – Purpose

• Evangelise?


• Disciple?


• Personal growth?


• Worship?


• Participation – relating to peers?


• Quality?


• Enabling?


• Teaching?

• All evangelism?


• Accessible to all?


• Age spread specific?


• Range of backgrounds


• Worship style

Communications

• With churches


• With key players


• Involvement


• Planning


• An overview – who knows the big picture

What comes first…

• More nerves


• Organising – distracts


• Starting points?


• Slave to system?


• Are we serving aWAKENING instead of using aWAKENING to serve us?

Break – why?

• Timing of service


• Purpose – question - group work


• Community      – talk

- length
- quality

Worship

• Need a leader. Someone to grab it ‘by the balls.’


• Practice


• Participation? Leadership…


• Time; someone always not around

• Speaker?

What God might have been trying to say to us (if only we would listen…)

• Need to get Vision sorted first!!!

• Core Band members… one of each of singer, drummer etc and then add in etc


• Core people would bring it together

• Community

• Not about developing jobs, but developing ministries… prophets, pastors, worship leaders, teachers. Etc.


• Strategic


• Repeated chances to do it… build them up…

• Bee – flower to flower, makes honey.


• cf. God with us, takes little bit from all, and makes it into something… everyone using gifts.

• Bee’s (again!) One pioneers, shows everyone else what to do, and how to get there, then all go for it.

• Totally change (our expectations of how awakening works (is that right Debs?)


• Re-launch it – forget past and move forwards…

• How do we do community?!

Impressions of aWAKENING – how we feel/think during events.
(Please bear in mind its quite difficult to sum up a spider diagram/ thought-flow chart on a word processor document! I’ve tried to group the thoughts together that seem linked, but where that’s not possible but where there are still thoughts that link with another set I’ve mentioned it in the text.)

• Community     


• There to see mates


• Social, takes time to become about the spiritual


• Feel welcomed

• Hard getting people involved in band

• Concern/worry


• Hectic


• Nerves


• Not relaxing

• Disappointed – encouraged


• High expectations


• Challenging

Impressions of aWAKENING – what we see/hear going on during events.
(Please bear in mind its quite difficult to sum up a spider diagram/ thought-flow chart on a word processor document! I’ve tried to group the thoughts together that seem linked, but where that’s not possible but where there are still thoughts that link with another set I’ve mentioned it in the text.) (Confused? You will be…)

• Worship Group      - crowded


• Loud

• Good Speakers

• Fun

• Laid back


• Not slick


• Messy but nice!


• Opportunity for people to get involved


• People growing in gifts.


• Same people doing same things


• Lack of involvement


• Not equal representation


• Inclusive

• Bar feel (café)


• Food break


• Sweets and greeters

• Sitting in friendship groups

- People on floor

• More people turn up @ modern churches


• Different surroundings


• Lots of venues

• Regular people (linked to “sitting in friendship groups”)

- Numbers going down
- Either cramped or spacious

• Age group

- Not many students
- Not many adults

• Non-creative


• Lights


• Videos, or not


• Projector/OHP

Ok. What I’m going to do is:

1. Try and type up all the various sheets Andy/Debs produced with our feedback on impressions (internal and external) of previous aWAKENINGS


2. Sum up the main points/questions/issues that came out of that process


3. A sub-section on what we thought God may have been trying to say to us during that time (as fed-back to the group by the individuals)


4. A section on the big questions/thoughts that came up next


5. A Second sub-section on the issue of community that came out of the previous sections


6. Sum up the challenges of doing church sheet which we looked at towards the end


7. Finish off by trying to sum up what we came out of the day with.

Writing this down, I realise that there might be more to transcribe and type up than I can manage in one sitting, so rest assured if what you are looking for isn’t on the website yet, it will be… eventually… honest.    

testing that y'all can find this etc.