The gathering got together Sunday afternoon and it was a pretty amazing time together.

We took the Bible Story of Jesus calming the storm and ate a meal and discussed it together. To help us really get into the story we all took on characters that may or may not have been there and started to have the conversation around the meal table, pretending this was the night after.

Before the meal people were sent short character briefs and asked to read the Mark 4:34-41 version of the story. That was the preparation … so after some opening words and prayer, and hearing the story read to us again, we collected our meals, got into character and discussed faith and trust and other stuff with Jesus.

This worked incredibly well with comments in the debrief afterwards like:
‘it was great to hear other viewpoints’
‘we seemed to focus more on the story’
‘I had to think more’
and my favourite comment as I think it’s important and something we miss from multi-million studio reproductions of Jesus stories ….’I was struck by the humanity of Jesus’

Obviously the person playing Jesus was quite key and I think we got that person spot on as they had really great answers and challenges for the other disciples … but every other character got into their part well and the conversation went on for around 40 minutes.

I think this is one of the most thought provoking and personally challenging things we have tried as the gathering … and pleased to say it seemed to work.

I know we are supposed to thank God and all that because it is all about God and not about us …. but today …. right here and right now … I want to thank the amazing people of the gathering for being willing to try this out … yes God was there today … but without you amazing people we would not have got very far.

Thank you …. there are times when I am reminded what a privilege it is to be part of this community …. today is one of those days.