Friday, January 05, 2007
emerging church postcards 2006: Aotearoa New Zealand 2
a helpful Scripture in the formation and life of your church community: Luke 10:1-12 invites us to look for God among the tables and everyday lives of people. We go to people rather than invite them to come to us. Refresh started as a dream of providing spiritual resourcing in our local cafes. If lots of shops sell spiritual journals, then what does Christianity have to contribute to the disciplines of Spiritual Journalling?
Ideally this would be in a public space, and so Steve Taylor spent time building relationships with a local café owner. The initial plan was to offer a block course on Spiritual Journalling.
The first course attracted such interest that it has birthed the possibility in 2007 of this becoming regular, weekly, and church by offering once-a-month sharing of what people are learning and weekly teaching on spiritual practises.
learning about spiritual formation: That people are longing for spiritual resourcing and that providing time and space for people to work on their spirituality is gift. Further, that the more this space is located in the cafes where people spend their everyday lives, the more likely it is to connect with people on the fringes of the church.
movie (or scene) that sums up your year: Everyday People and that sense of God’s future being revealed among the lives and coffee cups of everday people.
best mission moment in 06: First, sitting with the café staff to negotiate the use of the café and suddenly realising that in the grace of God and the circumstances of life, I was actually becoming the café pastor. Luke 10 was real, and I was speaking the peace of God amid the really hard places of people’s lives. Secondly, having someone on the first night of the journaling course voice their disillusionment with prayer unanswered and realising that this was going to be a very honest space, and thus a much more exciting place to be than any pious religious setting.
For more emerging church postcards 2006, go here.
For emerging church postcards 2005, go here.
For information on how your emerging church can send a postcard, go here.
)
As participant of Refresh I am longing for space and time to journal!! So hard to carve out time outside the organised time. A group of us from Kaiapoi crashed the group across town and had an interesting journey enhanced by time sharing in the car on the half hour drive home!! Dreaming of planting a group in Kaiapoi but dreaming of other ventures too???
Comment by jowall — January 6, 2007 @ 10:38 am
Ps on the cafe environment side of things – our entry last year from the Kaffay has some interesting changes ahead too. Great relationship built with Kaffay staff and other regulars but can’t drink their coffee anymore! Should we move?? Another venue better atmosophere and coffee but less public. Group was planted from preschool mums do I continue to host now not part of that community as a mum? Questions also around has it become too “spiritual” for new arrivals? Lots of questions at moment. Fuller St Cafe possible postcard too but in revisioning stage so need to put out to group first or maybe I’ll do a summary of last year??
Comment by jowall — January 6, 2007 @ 10:48 am
tell us about last year.
and also about the questions from Kaffay – they are excellent questions. many emerging church groups wrestle with challenges of being “ageist” and so you provide some really good data for the wrestling.
Comment by steve — January 10, 2007 @ 6:34 pm