I think I have mentioned in the past that Sarah is the youth and children’s work co-ordiantor at St. Marks Gillingham. She has a brilliant creative brain and likes to experiment now and again. Actually, I think she is experimenting all the time and trying to push the boundaries – hence the creative service I blogged about last week using the ‘last supper’ picture.

 

Due to Sarah’s creative difference-ness today some of the families from church went to Shorne Country Park rather than be in the ‘service’ or in ‘groups’. This was an event for all the families – although I think a number were put of by the weather. There were times when I thought if Sarah was not organising this then I might go home. 

 

Sarah had plans for a treasure hunt (which Martin organised well and happened in the rain), some games (again which happened later and the sun started to shine). There were also plans for families to use the natural materials around the park to contribute to a large ‘tapestry’ called ‘God the Creator’. This never happened due to the weather which is a shame as I was quite interested to see how that would turn out. 

 

Reflecting on the day, though, it was good and there are a number of incidents of ‘the sacred in the everyday’ which I spoke about after our holiday in the Loire and reading of a Leonard Sweet book. God was clearly around today in a number of little ways:

 

a dad came with his daughter who knew nobody from the church. He was planning to drop her off and come back later. Due to the weather he stayed, thoroughlly enjoyed himself as he was made very welcome and wants to know when we do something again so he can come

 

on the treasure hunt we lost all 3 children that decided to go of with other families. The willingness on both sides was cool and it was great seeing our children seeing the other members of church as an extension of our family/community, which of course they are!

 

part way through the day I had to take Tom to casualty. He has blogged about it here so I will not go in to it. At the country park, Helen, who works for the health authority and knows about feet examined him and suggested an x-ray. When we got home after our visit she phoned to see how Tom was.

  



while we were at hospital a few games happened which saw people together haveing a great celebration type time.

 

Is not this how church should be? Sharing experiences, having fun, being family to each other. Too often we can think of church as being the thing we do in a particular building at a set time. This was real community; people enjoying each others company, sharing lives and having a good laugh together.

 

More of it I say cos if I’m honest, with the weather and ‘church thing’ I was not really looking forward to the day. It was really excellent though and if I was not there I feel I would have missed out on something special that both unites us and celebrates our differences in quite a profound way.