Escaping the "Black Hole"

I have not spent much time this week with the Gentiles. I took a funeral last Thursday and managed to spend an hour with the family afterwards at the wake. I was on the "Eden Bus" on Friday evening with some of the local young people (I think they call themselves Scallies). Detached youth work is not my primary gifting!! However the evening began well with a little Kingdom moment as one of the lads asked if I could heal him as he had been sick and had stomach pains. I said Jesus sometimes heals people when we pray, so I called over one of the other workers and we prayed with him. A few minutes later he said that he was feeling a lot better.

Yesterday I was with a family preparing a funeral. It is amazing that people who have never been church members still want a "religious" person to do the funeral of their loved ones. As I was talking with the daughter of the woman who died I sensed a spiritual hunger .. here was a busy person who until now has not felt a need for anything spiritual .. and would probably think traditional church too out of touch to be relevant. I find myself wanting to explore the idea of having a Soul Cafe event for people like this to come and chill out and awaken the spiritual seed within.

I know this would be "come to us" ... but hey, we can have a "Mixed Economy" of Fresh Expressions can't we? And it would be nice to have a chance to use some of those wonderful arty-farty powerpoint presentations and multi-sensory activities that get used on the alt-worship scene. I know also that if something like this does happen it will need to be done with people and not for people if it is to be relevant and sustainable.

Much of the rest of my time at the moment is taken up trying to get out of the Black Hole. If I am to have the time and energy needed to pioneer fresh expressions of church and gather a team of church planters I need to release some of my present duties to other people. For example, on Monday I spent most of the day writing the PCC Annual Report which was approved at the PCC meeting on Monday evening in preparation for the Annual Church Meeting. Next year the PCC needs to choose some of their own to write the report rather than expecting the vicar to do it. It will not say what I want to say, but it will be more authentic and owned.

I am encouraged by some offers of support that I am getting from within the church community and I am spending time with the people who will be taking on greater responsibility. We are restructuring our service pattern which will result in more variety and smaller numbers at each service. It is my hope that these will be a little bit less formal because of the smaller numbers and will be mostly planned and led by lay people. Again it will be hard for me to let go even though I know I must, because for the past 14 years I have worked so hard to make the Sunday Service a powerful and professionally led event.