The equipping your church course was excellent. Well thought out, well planned and loads of excellent networking and discussions. I’ve got great mind maps from each of the sessions and have returned (via the sea) inspired and exciting about the possibilities of engaging with people on a spiritual level.

We looked at the 6 big questions that people seem to ask:
about their destiny
about their purpose
about the universe
about God
about the supernatural
about suffering

We then looked at how to engage with people in light of this.

A number of people spoke about, and many were involved in, visiting psychic fairs and, amongst other stuff, offering free prayer. People want prayer and at psychic fairs they are willing to pay for it. A Christian stall can offer prayer for free! Where this was happening, churches were encouraged to offer more prayer at other places throughout the week.

Today there was a fair bit of emphasis on praying for people. This reminded me of when Sarah was at SITC last year. They offered to pray for people on the streets of Peckham and not once were they turned down! People want prayer! People are into the spiritual and, surprise surprise, they do not think the church has anything to offer in this department!!!

Young people are interested in God and yet see the church as irrelevant.
The nation generally is interested in spirituality, and yet sees the church as having nothing to offer!

As Christians we have done such an excellent marketing of our message over the centuries!

At the end of the day I bought the workbook ‘Equipping your church in a spiritual age’ and a few sets of the angel and nature cards I mentioned a little while ago. They look good and I am keen to see what people say about them.

I’m excited by what I heard today – but some stuff does concern me. If people move ahead and take this stuff on board seriously and try missional incarnational stuff with different spiritualities of people then church is going to look very very messy. We are going to have to work hard at encouragement, at acocuntability, at recognition, at releasing gifts and at acknowledging as real and valuable stuff that we do not understand or even like! Now … which is going to be the biggest challenge?