BB is Big Blogger and is an imaginary friend who pops along every now and then and gives me a hard time or says things I dare not say.
BB where you bin?
Oh around St, around.
I thought you'd left me.
Course not. Just didn't think open-hearth surgery was a good thing in your early days in a new place. You know how you are with disclosure. Get carried away.
You mean heart not hearth?
You have a heart?
Fair point.
So. How's it going?
You know I don't really know. I feel settled, comfortable, at home and all that but also a little nervous that the only way forward, to grow this church, is for busy people to get busier.
But you always say that if you are going to do more as a busy person then you need to work out first what to do less of.
I say it in better English.
Git.
Fair point. But that would mean telling busy people that they should give up a lot of their extra-curicular activity for a bit and devote more time to the church.
Or?
Or simply have the church as a support group for busy people with other ministries.
Hmm. Dilemma.
Indeed.
I'll pop back next week and ask you how it went?
How what went?
The discussion.
What discussion?
The one this just started.
9 comments:
A while ago I our vicar sent me the planning sheet for all the services in our group of 4 churches. It was an A4 sheet of paper crowded out with 8pt font, initials instead of names and abbreviations. A huge amount of work by very talented people just to keep the show on the road. I just struck me as less than intelligent.
I've been blogging about something similar over at my place. I hope it's not too impertinent to link to my own blog as part of this conversation? And I certainly don't anyone to consider my efforts as examples of good practice..
I guess that I do want to explore what doing 'church without walls' or 'liquid church' might look like. That is, how we can help each other sing the Lord's song in a strange land.
Caroline Too
i am confused by your post, do you have a simple version for those who failed GCSE english?
Perhaps some people are called to spend the majority of their time in a church environment. I am certainly learning about how much organisation it can take to keep a large church running. Perhaps it is OK for vicars in particular to spend 3/4 evenings a week in church related meetings. But I do think there is a danger of the number of meetings, training evenings and workshops becoming too great, continually causing members of the congregation to spend their evenings locked up in a church room when they would be better spending some of their time building relationships with people outside of the church.
Our church is just about to embark on a term with a strong focus on evangelism. There are many places we could start with this topic and it was suggested that we go back to the basics of what the good news is and how we tell our friends about it. My question is, do we need to go back further than this and ask whether people are able to develop genuine friendships with people who do not share their Christian faith or if are they so busy with church meetings that they don't have any time or energy left to actually meet and hang out with people who need to hear about it?
Dear Anonymous
I'm sorry; I did get rather swept away in a series of jargon or 'in' phrases.
I guess what I meant was that I think the important aspect of doing God's work, of learning to follow Him more faithfully happens outside the church walls, in our daily lives. and I'm not at all sure that what we do in church meetings is helpful there.
again, sorry for the jargon.
I kind of think I've been doing too much in the church (i.e. with and for other church people) and not enough out of the church (I guess encouraging people to become part of the church?). So, recently, I've commited to doing some stuff out of the church to try and build relationships with those people not a part of the church.
Does this mean the church has suffered in some way? I've certainly been doing less of the stuff I could be doing for the church and in some cases stopped doing some things altogether...
I'm trying to get the ballance right.
hehehehhe
nailsea
man i never expected to see that name on a blog
especailly an emerging church related one
i grew up in nailsea and moved away as soon as i could at 18 and although now only 22 go back as infrequenlty as possible while not being a knob head to my mom.
anyway cool
i spoted you over on a comment of mark berry's blog
hows nailsea (or nausea as a spell checker will correctly tell you it is)
Hey Matt, next time you're in town say hello.
thanks for the invite
i'll probably be around sometime over easter
it would be cool to hear what sort of effect the whole emerging conversation is having nailsea\
god bless you in all your doing
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