Yesterdays gathering was a great experience and one that I think was encouraging for us all.

We thought a little about Pentecost. After our gathering liturgy, James led us in some trust games which flowed well into watching a short video clip of the scene in Acts 2. After chatting about ‘what all this meant’, particularly to us in the 21st century in Kent, we them moved into Open Space.

Open Space is a practice I saw at COTA which has stayed with me. During this time we have ‘space’ to think about or dwell on what we have been talking about and heard from each other. For some, this could involve sitting in front of an icon, watching a video that asked more about the theme, or praying in a creative way – on this ocassion by using anointing oil or sitting in front of a fan to feel the spirit upon your face.

We came back together to pray before Sarah got us making ‘tassles’ made up of 3 different colours to symbolise the Trinity. We had quite a laugh doing this and my tassle has been sat in my pocket all day and each each time I touched it my mind wandered to think about the Trinity. We finished with our sending/eating liturgy and shared cakes together in the crypt.

This was an encouraging time for a number of reasons – we had 2 new people come to the gathering  which is exciting to see. Seeing James lead us at the start showed how seriously we take children within this community. This was a gathering where people were free to explore and create as they try to make sense of their faith journey.

The joining of new people and the chat we had afterwards leads us to think that we are moving in the right direction in the format that we have. Sarah mentioned to me that I have become ‘churchy’ in my language and so that is something that we, or I, need to be aware of in the future. I guess the frustration now is how do we let people know who are searching and on this ‘faith journey’ that we exist?

Although this is all exciting – there is a frustration for me. I feel something is missing – a key person to work alongside me, to bounce ideas off from within the community, to set up with me. At the moment I am ‘taking a strong lead’ with the gathering in ensuring our monthly gathering happens and at the moment because of another key family lots of great things happen…but I think this should be more organic and decentralised rather than resting with one, or even two, people or sets of people. To be decentralised, however, we need more people and so I feel we are in this frustrating chicken and egg scenario! We have great people in the gathering but we need more.

So if you are the praying type – please pray that I bump in to some other people soon that I can bounce things around with regularly or that they find us.

YOu can also find the gathering on facebook.