Reaching Out

Tags

Nature, Photography, Religious Thoughts

This seashore grass has red roots which reach out beyond its green boundary.  It looks almost like this bit of nature is going through a church mapping process and it got me to thinking.

All too often when such processes are gone through the talk is about people coming to the centre from the outskirts to receive sustenance for when they travel back away from the hub, and that is true.  However this plant shows that it is a two-way thing for the roots also bring sustenance to the grass.  But I also think there is something far more fundamental that struck me as I pondered on those roots.  Yes there is a  community where the church building is actually placed, but the church is more than one building of stone, brick or wood it is the flesh building of each of its members.  As individual roots we are called to serve the locality of were we live – and for most of us that is not in the immediate community around the church – we are sent out to love and serve the Lord, not just until we leave the church grounds or its immediate community but right back to the end of our root, however near or far that might be.  What is more we are called to be the link, the root between the two being refreshed and fed by the centre, yes, but also bringing back to the center the concerns and joys and bounty from were we have been.  Which leaves me with something to ponder before we get too far into Growth Strategy, where is the community any given church serves?  Surely it can’t just be the one community were the bricks and mortar are situated, is it not more like a network of communities that the flesh and blood of the church lives and works in?

Question Answered

Earlier on in the week I posed myself a question on the blog post Counting Strands – Has my outreach imagination been tempered or stopped working, or is there something else at play?

Yesterday we headed off for A Play, a Pie and a Pint and I got the answer.

Now there is a good deal of work that needs to be done including finding some other people who can also catch the vision that I caught while sitting listening to Kevin Lennon, tell the story of Scott and the Antarctic from a penguins point of view, but there is most definitely a kernel of an idea forming.

Counting Strands

Tags

Religion

Today at the Diocesan Office the Revd Chris Kellock was talking about missional leadership, the strand of the Diocesan Growth Strategy (although I am unclear as to whether we are supposed to have stopped calling it that now) that has had a lot of people scratching their head over what it means.  I thought I had an inkling and it turns out I was just about right nevertheless it was a valuable time and I still gleaned some very good stuff from the day.  Back in the Rectory it got me to thinking about the other strands of the Diocesan Growth Strategy.

Now the DGS shouldn’t be about box ticking but as a little exercise to amuse myself I had a look through this week’s diary to see how, having spent the day on missional leadership, if the other 5 strands were represented this week.  Prayer and spirituality; learning and discipleship; numerical growth, welcome and integration; children and young people were all encompassed there in various guises, along with an opportunity to put some missional leadership stuff into practise at tonight’s Vestry meeting, the one that was lacking was imaginative outreach into the local community.  Now I am not scared of some imaginative outreach and there are those who will tell you that I have got them doing some very imaginative outreach that they never would have dreamed of ever doing themselves.  So I delved back and forward in my diary but still no.  Yes there is outreach into the local community but it is hardly what I would class as imaginative, more the standard fare of Christian outreach, so I am left with a question to work on.  Has my outreach imagination been tempered or stopped working, or is there something else at play?

Of course it should be underlined that congregations are only being asked to concentrate on one or two strands, and no one person or congregation can really expect to have comprehensively covered all strands in any given week.  On the other hand maybe tonight’s Vestry meeting will fling up something that can be filed under the imaginative outreach into the local community arm and I can get to shout ‘bingo!’.

All The G’s

Tags

Religion

Yesterday, (yes I know it was Super Friday as my day off is referred to by certain members of the congregations, and no I am not back at work I am still signed off by the GP) nevertheless yesterday I took a trip to the Cathedral for a meeting on the Diocesan Growth Strategy.

This will be so much part of all that we do and plan at both congregational and diocesan level in the future that I had been keen to attend one of the day which was being held this week.  As driving is still no longer an option a trip over the bridge down into Ayrshire, which would have been my first option had my health not been in the equation, was not possible.  Super Friday saw Hubby taking me over to the Cathedral to work for the first time since Easter and deal with some of the brain fog which as my health improves I am becoming more and more conscious of.

It was a good day, good to spend time with my peers, to catch up on how other people are, to start to sift through my grey cells how the strategy might be worked out in this corner of the vineyard.  This is a long-term not a flash in the pan process and can not even begin at either St Andrew’s or All Saints until I am back at work, but that doesn’t stop my brain whirring with the excitement of the possibilities and challenges that lay ahead.