Category Archives: community

shared stories

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img_0503-1Tonight was the first Agapai for a couple of weeks.
We saw 4 people  and we shared what God was doing, prayed together, ate together and finished by sharing bread and wine together with some simple words.

I enjoy meeting, listening and eating.
There is very little planning (other than the menu!) involved
It seems such a natural thing for friends and community to do together.
I mean … we all have to eat right?  … so why not get together with friends and eat and pray together.

We have a core group of around 4 for Agapai.
I hope this grows over this next few months.
I pray that new people, those seeking community, will join us to share their stories and to pray and eat.

Tonight we shared a variety of stories, and fears, and hopes … and we prayed together before sharing bread and wine.
I felt it was a privilege to be involved tonight.
See you next week maybe?

Food for thought 

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We had our third Agapai last night in its new format. There were 5 of us which has been our largest gathering yet (apart from when the archdeacon visited). A new person joined us who has only lived in the village for a few days and she is looking for community.Agapai felt like a welcoming community last night. There was food, sharing, serious moments, lots of laughter; there was prayer, hope and sharing of bread and wine. There was acknowledgment that God is at the centre of what we do.

All these things were exciting to see. Most of all though, and what I was really excited about, was that there was acceptance. There was real acceptance and the start gas of trust. I can’t be sure but I kind of feel that if any casual observer looked in on Agapai last night that they would never have guessed that we did not know each other very well, or that that particular group of people had never met before. The openness and acceptance showed something of the uniting spirit of God. 

It was a joy to be at …. I’m praying that we continue and grow! 

Lights of prayer

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IMG_0651I had the pleasure of catching up with old friend Jonathan Oloyede last night as he visited the east Greenwich parish to teach about prayer. He was an inspiring speaker, as ever, and people seemed both really encouraged and enthused by what he had to say.

As well as teaching and talking of expectancy he shared this video of dominoes. He used it as a metaphor for prayer … that as we do our bit …. well watch the video and you will get the drift!

A ‘little bit’ he suggested to everyone was to set your phone alarm to mid-day and then take time out to speak the Lord’s Prayer. I have suggested to the Holy Trinity community that we could do this.

At the ned of the evening we gathered around the map of our patch. If you click on the pic you can probably get a bigger image … although HT is in the wrong (it’s old) place … to gain an idea of where we are working. While looking at the map we prayed for light to appear and for lights to come on … that resonated with me quite powerfully … as I pray for Christians and those interested in faith around the peninsula to be visible and to join with others to get involved in this community.

This weekend we saw new people. Tonight a new person is coming to Agapai. I pray this is the start of something new. Amen!

 

birthing … something!

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Wednesday ev5e046d53-f183-4819-88c2-21e3e639efb1 copyening saw the second of our ‘new’ community meals of Holy Trinity.
A few of us gathered, we ate together a pretty tasty meal (#blowmyowntrumpet). We shared our stories of the week, in other words what had been happening and what, if anything, we felt God may have been doing in our weeks.
We asked what we needed prayer for and prayed for each other.
On some nights we might find someone has something to share as a thought or question which we would then chat about around the table.
We then shared bread and wine together using a very simple liturgy referring to how long bread and wine has been shared. I think it is also important that as we try and develop something ‘new’ we remain aware of how deeply rooted in history and tradition this practice is and how central it is for intentional Christian community to grow

The time ‘felt’ good and right.
It felt like a time of encouragement and building up.
It felt like a time of connection with the wider church and faith.
I am fairly committed to thinking that if ‘church’ is going to be birthed and grow in this place then it needs to be through community that wants to spend time together, a group of people that as it meets and grows learns to trust and share and live life together. That then, in my mind, becomes intentional community.

We are still in very early days, we are still pretty much learning as we go along. It is early days but we have birthed something ‘new’ on the Peninsula.

If this sounds interesting to you … and live near enough to join us … then please do!

Happiness course

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happy-course-logo-100hI recently joined a training day with Livability and have now been trained and am licensed as a Happiness Course leader.

When I went to the day I am happy (yeah yeah great pun!) to admit that I was a little sceptical about the title … it raised a few eyebrows in some of my circles … but the material is really excellent and I am looking forward to delivering our first Happiness Course here on the peninsula. I am fairly convinced The Happiness Course could be of real benefit to local communities and to churches seeking to engage with and support community.

I am excited about this course as I believe this is a course that could be really helpful to a broad spectrum of people. This is not a faith based course, but it is a course that churches can become licensed and offer for the benefit of their communities. The course looks at what happiness is and what makes us happy, it asks whether happiness levels can change or whether it is genetic … it is a very interactive course, with a mixture of teaching, video, interaction, problem solving etc. The course consists of four 2 hour sessions.

On the Peninsula I am not only asking when we could run this course … but also where. One of my frustrations with being here is the lack of public or community space to do things. I do have a few ideas though and so I’ll just have to wait and see what happens.

If you are on or near the Peninsula and think you would be interested in the Happiness Course (check out thee weblink) then get in touch ….

homes .. not halls

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the-word-homeI have been struck in the news recently by a lot of discussion around how we support refugees and others that are homeless and need support. There has been a good response from churches who have been talking about making use of empty church buildings or empty church houses or even halls and stuff like that. While that is a positive response I am not sure it is the correct or best response.

I will try to explain my thinking with a hypothetical situation. Take, say a family from a war torn country arriving here in need of shelter. We are aware of an empty house in one of our towns and we house them there. They know no one. They are in a new land. They are trumatised. They are in a new country with new customs, new rules, a new language. I wonder if this approach results in a continuation of a feeling of isolation. It is definitely a step in the right direction … but is there more we can do … is there more that God might require of us?

I believe people seeking shelter need more than just a building …. all of us need connection with the rest of humanity, all need to know they are accepted, loved, cared for … wanted even to add to the community we find themselves in . Living alone, where you know no one, can simply generate isolation and feelings of rejection, no matter how best the intentions.

Maybe, instead of our halls, we need to be offering our homes?
Maybe, instead of placing people into our empty sanitised buildings, we need to invite people into our messy cultural rich loving homes.
Maybe we need to open our family life and invite others into it.
Maybe ‘finding somewhere’ is easier than ‘inviting in.’
Finding empty buildings for people may be an easier option … inviting a family to live with you, and learn about culture and community with you, to eat together and learn together is a much harder thing to do.
Inviting people in, though,  gives a more solid footing to growing in community … it is just that for many of us it is so hard to do.
I include myself in that …. but it does not stop the niggling feeling that we should be doing more.

What does this mean for me? I don’t know!
What about for our church HT on the Peninsula … again I don’t know!
What do you think … any comments on this … am I way off the wall in this thinking?
Homes or halls?

 

agapai

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IMG_0008Agapai is the name we have chosen for our Wednesday evening get together. It is a word that is used to describe the meals and get togethers of the early church and so it seemed a fitting name.
I spoke of the changes we had made to how we worship here a few months ago. Last week we reviewed those changes and asked how we felt things were going. We also asked what we thought was good, what was frustrating and what was lacking.

Out of that process came the thought that Agapai had started to lack in its purpose. We started to meet to talk about the kind of church we wanted to be but with just a few people this became quite a draining experience and described as ‘just like work’. We made a decision that instead of talking about various formats that, instead we would be it. This resulted in last night’s Agapai having more of a purpose.

As always we met to eat. As we ate we answered two questions:
‘What has God been doing this week?’ and
‘What do you need prayer for?’
We then prayed together before simply sharing bread and wine.
On occasions we might add some kind of brief ‘thought’ into this mix.

As the evening drew to a close I reflected and had a great sense of us now starting something different on the peninsula. We have started a place to share our stories, to eat, to pray and break bread together …. that in itself is a pretty good start I think.

So …. if you live on or near the Peninsula and you are looking to join a small fledgling Christian community that is seeking to grow and be a positive influence …. then why not pay us a visit …. all are welcome!
(more details on the HT website)

a start ….

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balcony view .JPGLiving on the Greenwich Peninsula is a fairly unique experience to many. People live in close proximity and yet I can go for days without seeing anyone from my block of apartments. At 1801 last night someone that moved into the village at the end of December described her experience of living here as being anonymous.

One of the strengths of living in a  place like the Peninsula is that people want to work and do build community together. There is a very strong residents committee on the Greenwich Millennium Village which I have been both invited and pleased to be a part of.

At the start of the year we were all profoundly affected by a death of a resident who was run over by a bus. For years the residents committee has been asking for the roads to be safer. The residents have pulled together and launched an amazing campaign for the roads around the village to be safer …. you could support this by signing here.

The residents committee live here and care about the place we live and show that by being willing to make time to work together. At last Thursday’s residents meeting we were able to build on this by starting our survey of residents views. This is going to be something that is going to be a priority for me and the people of HT for the next few weeks. Why? Well … as Holy Trinity part of our reason for being here is to be ‘good news’, to help and be a blessing to the community. Surveys can take a long time and cost a lot in finance and time to carry out and so this is a way we can be of help. The surveys, which are anonymous, and whatever we learn will be shared with the residents committee and other agencies that are seeking to work together here.

Meeting people on Thursday was an incredible encouragement. Everyone has views and wants to share them. They wish to share them because they passionately care about the place that they live in. After a lot of research and talking to various agencies I found Livability to be very helpful in getting us to think about what to ask.

So … on our survey we are asking three simple questions:
What do you like about living on The Peninsula?
What frustrates you about living here?
What do you think is lacking here?

After just 30 surveys it would be premature to say we have any understanding of views and a lot more residents need to be spoken with. It is, however, a good start and I was really encouraged by the helpful and engaging response from people.

Over the next few weeks I and a little team hope to have many more interactions with people with those three questions. When we have got a good sample and heard lots of voices I hope we are then able to engage in way that will be both a blessing and authentic …. watch this space!

 

so … how’s it going?

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a day to contemplateI am in that position where I need to start reflecting again. I have allowed myself to get out of the discipline of writing here as a reflective practice. That needs to start again.
This blog will become, yet again, a place where I will think aloud. It’s a blog in the public domain so please feel free to comment.

So … to answer that title question …
It’s  a challenge!
Leaving a community you have known and loved for 30 odd years and moving into a new community where you know very little and understand even less is a challenge.

So what is my major challenge?
I was asked that recently and had to think.
I think … my toughest challenge … is a feeling of being in this alone.
There is a lot to do, so many opportunities, so many people and organisations to engage with …yet, although I am in a team, … it feels pretty much that I am doing a lot of this stuff alone as everyone here s incredibly busy.

I already know that the life of a pioneer is a lonely one.
In many ways it needs to be.
I have written in the past a lot about the power of vulnerability and I still hold by that. I think ministry of vulnerability is incredibly vital in my context.
Thats has always been the case and I have experience of that.
I accept that is ho this has to be.
In Medway my life as a pioneer was lonely, but that loneliness was in an environment of familiarity. In Greenwich that loneliness is in a place of unfamiliarity and I realised I have underestimated the effect of that.

Being an advocate for change can be quite draining.
Looking for ways to engage with a community hidden behind electronic doors can be frustrating. From limited research and talking with professionals working in this area I am pretty convinced that loneliness is an issue for people … and yet trying to engage with that is hard as people here are protected from people knocking on doors.

Despite the challenge, I am confident. I am convinced that God has called me here for this point in time and that we, Holy Trinity, will find ways to engage with and support this community.

But …. I need help.
So I am looking for a core of people that may or may not already be involved in HT. This core of 2 or 3 people would regularly meet to pray with me about the peninsula. These people would be at virtually everything  we do as well as in time take on some responsibility for running and or planning stuff. Currently I am praying that these people will become pretty obvious very soon.

If you are the praying type … you could pray that too!

Invisible … 

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  Following from my last post … I am out … The view proves it with the sun shining in through the coffee shop window and the Canary Wharf buildings looking very bright and shiny. 

There is a wide mix of people here; building contractors, people collecting coffee on the way to the tube, some popping in for early lunch, and just a couple loitering with a friend. I think I am the oldest he by a good 10/15 years …. 

I’m blogging ‘live’ in situ because I can and I never really have before. If I was to record my feelings I guess I feel nervous, a little out of place at the moment and maybe generally invisible. Some people have spied the dog collar and after a sneaky look as determined to make no eye contact. The staff, though, have been welcoming. I feel a little out of place but not in the wrong place. People are not used to seeing priests around in the community just drinking coffee …. I hope as I become more established here that I will be able to serve these people in some way. 

As I write I suddenly feel a little ‘better’ as I am watching a coup,e in their 70’s cross the road with their dog. I am clearly not the only one around born before the 80’s! 

This is a place that I clearly need to hang around more in. This is at the centre of the community and seems to be a place where people are happy to be. As time goes on I hope I will start to understand this community and how we can serve it more.