God in the everyday

Hi gang. Thought I'd start a new topic I'd like you all to contribute to (make me feel I'm still part of things even though I can't get along to meetings these days!)

Last night, I was putting Kitty to bed and a nice thought struck me. I settled her as usual, left the room and waited outside her bedroom door until she'd settled herself to sleep. As I sat on the top stair listening to her cry, I thought how I wished she could know that I was right outside her door, very much still with her and that I hadn't abandoned her.

Then it struck me (in one of those 'this might be relevant' moments) that God feels just that way about me. When I'm in need and feel he's a million miles away, he's actually just outside my bedroom door, his heart totally with me, wanting the best for me and wanting me to know how loved I am.

I thought it'd be great to share our 'God in the everyday' moments. I know Andy has a deeply spiritual one involving Paws our cat that I'll get him to leave (when he's finished cooking my tea... ;o))

Alt. Worship

More detailed report and photos soon... but comment away in the meantime.

Coming up... alt.worship

On April 24th I'd like us to try an alternative worship evening, with as many people as possible contributing.

The idea is to create a series of 'stations'; self contained mini activities that we will go round individually and use to hopefully encounter God.

We tried this at runway last year; you can see what we did here.

This website has lots of more information and photos. And there are hundreds of 'worship tricks' here.

St Pixels get feisty

Hi all. Thought you might find these comments on SofaChurch on the St Pixels blog as funny as I did...(they've been there a while but I've only just read them)

"That's a neat idea: if they added a kitchen and a bedroom they would have invented the house! I can't help thinking that if you want your church to look like a home you could just meet in a home like the first Christians did."

"So, unless I'm missing something, sofa church is a way of spreading a housegroup around the edge of a very large room. I'm not sure what happens next: it's going to be a neck-straining way to watch a presentation at one end of the room, and communication between sofas will require walkie-talkies. Maybe they are planning sacred dance on the red carpet? I hope it's glued to the parquet flooring..."

I especially like this line and am thinking of using it in the next lot of SofaChurch publicity:

"SofaChurch: house-group for people who predominantly shop at Ikea."

Is SofaChurch a church?

(Click here to see the pre-meeting post and discussion)

We began by discussing SofaChurch's target demographic - three main sorts of people.

Type A - people who are spiritually interested but with little or no interest in regular church
Type B - people who are generally happy in regular churches but want something extra - challenge/friendship/creativity etc
Type C - people who have grown tired/sick of regular church for whatever reason

History from similar Fresh Expressions suggests that it is much easier to find type B and C people, and this is borne out in our regular 'congregation' too. However, we seemed to agree that we still have to be striving to make SofaChurch suitable and accessible for any Type A people who might turn up.

So... is SofaChurch 'enough' for Type A or C people who don't also attend regular church; if it is someone's sole regular occasion of meeting with other followers does it meet the core requirements?

There were three main areas in which we thought perhaps not.

Prayer
It was felt that we might be lacking in opportunities for talking to and listening to God. This happens in a subtle internal way continually, but maybe we need to make more overt spaces in our meetings. I am keen to explore ways of doing this without disengaging from this world or from each other - God is everywhere, and in our relationships, and I think it is exciting to develop ways of recognising this. This could mean changing the way we speak so that we include God in our conversation - talking as if God was in the room, not some abstract figure elsewhere. We could also provide some forum for sharing concerns for intercession - areas in which we would like God to make a supernatural difference. Thirdly, perhaps we should have some kind of opening liturgy/activity to remind people of God's presence amongst us. All of this needs to be done in a way that isn't off-putting to Type A people...

Action - we will need to try a range of things out and see how they go.

Bible
Again, it was felt that while our discussions normally have a scriptural basis, this has been assumed and not frequently mentioned explicitly. For people who know quite a lot about the Bible this is fine, but those who don't know so much might benefit from being able to go and look up references later to read more.

Action - people who lead sessions should provide a few Bible references for further reading that underpin the ideas discussed. This could be on the blog, preferably hyperlinked to an online Bible.

For example, we talked this evening about God knowing what we want before we ask - Matthew 6:7-8 and the characteristics of the first Christian church - Acts 2.

Communion
This is a tricky one, since we are under the wing of the Methodist Church in which communion (breaking bread and wine) can only be officially administered by an ordained minister. We do, however, regularly share food and drink, and the occasional meal. Perhaps we should see this as our ongoing communion, rather than having set special times.

Action - make sure that we do lots of eating together in a sharing manner!

Please let me know if I have missed something, or misrepresented the discussion, or if anyone else has anything to contribute.

Chocolat

We all seemed to find this month's film inspiring, moving and challenging. Please post some thoughts in the comments; I will too when I have a moment.

Kitty's baptism

An advance notice for you: Kitty's baptism will be at St Johns during the 10am service on June 1st. It'll be a small part of the main service and so very informal and there'll be tea and cakes in the back hall afterwards. We'd really love to have you all there!

Scroobius Pip - modern day prophet?

The next installment in our modern day prophets series... Scroobius Pip is a hip-hop poet with some very interesting lyrics.

We mainly discussed the song 'A letter to man from God'. You can see the video here, or read the lyrics here.

Among the things we discussed...

If God knows everything that will happen in advance, can he really regret the things we have done wrong?

God must be delighted when we make new medical discoveries, for example, but disgusted when we do not allow them used where they are most needed in poorer countries.

Did God set up the universe and then step back and watch, perhaps tinkering now and again, as the song implies?

Have we damaged the world indelibly? Would it recover if humans suddenly vanished?