Running on Empty
The women have restarted their meeting structure and it feels like they've retreated to safety. I am exhausted by many different pressures and have no energy for pioneering a way forward.
Don't know which bit of my work to seek God's vision for, and haven't the capacity to seek.
Goodbye Gospel 'n' Chips
I think Gospel 'n' Chips has had its day.
Is it sad?... perhaps...., but we have had good times and learnt about ourselves and God. More than a dozen people have spoken to us during the last couple of months and several have shared our physical food. The gospel reading has been highlighted in the wider church community due to the cards we have made. I vividly remember one member saying 'I feel alive when we get outside into the community, this is what being a Christian is really about'. We have grown together on this adventure, had fun, and gained insight into the importance of eating together.
I want to file this away as a good experiment. When we did something at the edge of the groups comfort zone we grew and had fun. We might plant a similar seed next year, but I hope we will plant a new one.
....and.... I was getting fed up of fish 'n' chips every week!
'Enabling Christians to act like Christians'
In her introduction to Beyond the Good Samaritan Ann Morisy talks about community ministry in terms of enabling Christians to act like Christians and of feeding people’s imaginations so that the significance of the gospel can be sensed. I think this happens when we encourage people to use action to change their thinking.
Enabling Christians to act like Christians is what I have seen happening with the women in our 3 meetings so far. I believe we are also communally discovering how to act as Church. The excitement of coming together and successfully sharing an aspect of our lives resonates with the ‘glad and sincere hearts’ of Acts 2:46-7.
When the women shared their experience with the whole Christian community I sensed a reversal - Thursday’s community WAS Church and Sunday was a fragment of Church.
The beauty of what I have seen is that it is just happening. If I had asked these women to engage in a study of missional ecclesiology they would have withdrawn. Discipling is also happening through the process, although neither knitting or jam making has involved conscious reference to it. The group has shone with God’s abundant life as we have worked together.
However this ‘just happening’ is problematic for me in seeing a way forward. Is this just a joyous interlude, or could this be a sustainable way forward for these women and part of God’s ongoing mission here?I’m left with questions:
- How can I (or indeed, should I) make the discipling a conscious part of what is happening?
- How can I give intentionality to learning to be Church - linking the joy and excitement etc. with Church and faith?
- How might we continue to meet in this way given the restarting of Women’s Fellowship? Is this part of WF or something different? Is this a remodelling of WF?
- Apt liturgy..... and jam making?........knitting? What about participation? Is there a simple approachable way forward here? Some symbolism.... candle...bread...scone?
I see so much potential in these women for their own growth as individuals and as a group. I see a church constrained but that could break out if they caught a vision for what God can do through them.
The Sunday after the Thursday before!
The women brought the jam we made to Sunday worship today. It was a rather spontaneous happening born largely, I think, out of their joy, and sense of achievement. It was as if Sunday's worship had become subsidiary to the women acting as Christians during the time of meeting to make the jam. The excitement of being active Christians overtook the routine aspect of Sunday worship, and generated spontaneous worship of God in praise of his creativity and creation as seen in the gift of creativity.
It was a 'we can DO this' moment with a felt sense of being the Body of Christ and the fruits of God's creation. The energy was palpable.
We experienced a joining together of ourselves, a moment of wholeness and healing, as we talked of the jam and the process of making it. The women laughed as they told the story to their wider Christian community.
We then completed our spontaneous task - bringing the jam physically to the centre of the worship, being intentional about our plan to share the gift we had been given. We prayed in thanks for our experience, and in dedication of ourselves and of the jam as it is given to ourselves and others.
An article from the church website
Tea and Jam for Seven!
20lb of Blackberry and Apple jam is sitting in North Lynn Methodist Church's kitchen awaiting labels. Seven women between 18 and 90 had fun together picking blackberries from the church garden and making the jam. There was lots of chatter, a couple of brews and some VERY purple hands. Amazingly only two of the women had made jam before, although others are now keen to make more!
The apples were windfalls from local trees and the jars were saved from being smashed at the bottle bank while the sugar, although not local, was fairtraded. All of this made for a creative afternoon with both an environmental impact and concern for justice.
Once the jars have been labelled the women are planning to give most of them to neighbours along with a personal invite to share in our harvest celebrations, and with this in mind gift tags with our harvest image and brief information are being made.
Neighbourliness and cherries
We're sitting around on the grass having just finished our fish and chips and we've just been talking about a man up a tree. Now, although this is supposed to be 'gospel and chips' his name wasn't Zaccheus. He was up a tree opposite, and we had noticed him in the gap between the flats and the houses.
One of the neighbours comes across the road towards us carrying an old plastic bag.
'Do you like cherries?' he says, 'I've just been picking them and I saw you here and though you might like some.'
I would love to say we shared our food in return, but it was already finished. We did share a few minutes of conversation, including answering his questions on what we were doing sitting there.
I feel a certain magic when people come and join in conversation with us like this, but the bringing of a gift had more power. It has made me think about what we are offering the people around us by our existence as Church here. I remember how last year we had blackberries going to waste in the garden and we didn't share the bounty of God's grace in creation. I didn't know that I wanted to eat cherries today, but I have been inspired and lifted by the gracious gift from our neighbour.
Here we are looking for ways to share Church with our community, and I find myself reflecting that it is one of our neighbours showing us the way.
Planting experimental seeds
This blog is beginning out of an intention to record and reflect on some of the experiments. Particularly experiments intended to support the emergence of relevant Church within the neighbourhood in which I live and work. Hope suggests the blog will (probably retrospectively) be part of the process of illumination and discernment.
The horizon contains whole realms of possibilities, and change has a tendency to be rapid and discontinuous, but there are two strands I am muddling around with at present. One combines talking about the gospel, eating fish and chips, and sitting on a patch of grass; the other combines a group of older women and their creative gifts. Both include the presence of Christ, and me..... I'm very grateful for the former, and the latter is who I have to offer!
I think the best way to sum up what I'm about is to say: 'the goal is the kingdom of God, the process is shared, and everything else is open to creative opportunism!'
