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.

Our decision to meet if 3 or more people where available means we were initially dented by the holiday season. This was followed by people waiting for conversations with the new minister around his thoughts. The group was always going to be a summer group and the nights will close in before this time of indecision has passed. At the moment talk is of a prayer meeting taking over both this and another mission focused group I have been enabling. With the inevitable dark evenings I feel I am best to focus on the longer term work.

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?
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• How can I give intentionality to learning to be Church - linking the joy and excitement etc. with Church and faith?
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• 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?
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• 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.