The gathering now has some form of web presence if you have missed out on that – there is a link to our facebook page on the right hand side of this blog page, and you can find an ‘in process’ web site here. As far as the gathering goes I am thinking through how we exist. As we only get together once a month at the moment it is easy to think of the gathering as merely an event, and that is definitely what we wish to avoid. We wish to be a growing community, a church, and to do that we need to do more than just ‘worship’ together.

I feel at the moment that I am missing something. I have taken some time out today to think and ponder over stuff in a prayerful way. I’d like to say that I had ‘a moment’ or ‘epiphany’ experience – but I didn’t! In fact, if I’m honest, the day has been ‘bloody hard work’ and I don’t feel that I have anything to show for it. To make it worse I really thought today would be a key day!

I’m stuck!
I’m waiting!
I’m fairly frustrated!

After yesterdays services a thought did strike me and I wondered if this situation is similar in some ways to those disciples who were stuck between Ascension and Pentecost. They were told to wait for the gift of the Holy Spirit. They are living in the excitement of seeing the resurrected Christ and his ascension; and then they have to wait. Looking at the first few chapters of Acts as I did today I think it becomes pretty clear that the disciples here were just blindy obedient.

By that I mean that they followed the instruction to wait, but that they did not really know what this ‘Holy Spirit’ was that they were waiting for. In some ways they just accepted that they had to ‘wait and see’ as they had been instructed. I wonder of they were frustrated too?

I look to those early chapters of Acts with more frustration if I am honest. They seem to be saying I have to wait more. The one action I can see here is that the group ‘met continually for prayer’. So I guess that is what we have to do. As a community of the gathering who living apart in the 21st century with different work and lifestyles, rather than living in 1st century Palestine quite close together, then we need to think how we can pray continually as meeting in the same place is not going to be possible. Maybe we need to agree to pray at set times wherever we are, adopting a kind of monastic approach to prayer through being united in prayers together at a time so that we can be united in our absence from each other. Or is that just fancy words to try and sound like I know what I’m doing?!

MY conclusion? : I’m still stuck – but I hope this waiting thing moves on soon.

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.

This Sunday see’s the second of our gatherings in the crypt of the cathedral.

We are starting to have a web presence and you can find us on facebook and temporarily in an early draft form at this site so that people that may be interested can find out more. If that is you please message us, or of it is someone you know please tell them about us. Feel free to pass the links on to others so that people can discover us for themselves.

This months theme is looking at a mixture of truth and Pentecost and I am looking forward top seeing what the community creates as we continue our journey together.

I am very conscious that my blogging has not been as regular over the last few months. I am still reflecting daily as my normal practice but the results of those reflections have not really been bloggable. Is that even a word?

There has been a lot of head stuff going on. The gathering has moved to the crypt and we need to decide how we let people know where we are and, more importantly, what we are about. It seems good to repeat myself and so below you can read the underlying ethos of the gathering – so if you know this already no need for you to go any further.

Below is what we, as the gathering, are about. This is what we are trying to achieve. We are not there, we aspire to be there and maybe one day we will come close. We are a group of people on a journey and invite others to join us on this exciting journey called faith. We are a young emerging community that continues to evolve and learn from each other.

we are people that long, maybe even too scared to dream, of church being a place which really connects with people outside, but also with us. 

We dream of a church where differences are celebrated and add to the communities flavour.
 

We are not worried so much about what people believe, but more concerned about how we believe: how we live out faith, how we are Christ-like.
 

We don’t care so much about worship style, but interested in something that’s authentic and enables all of us to connect with God where we are both emotionally and spiritually.
 

We really do believe and accept that faith is a journey, and that we can all exist at different points on the road, or even off it, with no fear of condemnation.
 

We are a growing community that does not judge a person by how they look, how they sound or by what they believe.
 

We want to see a community that loves and has people at its heart rather than being focused on a program that must be delivered.
 

We believe a community should be one that get together in a variety of ways regularly throughout the week to enjoy relationship with each other and with God, and is not restricted to any one day or meeting.
 

We are willing to pay the cost of time that comes with developing relationships.
 

We want to see ‘the gathering’ as a place where people belong because they are connected and on the journey, not a place where they can only belong if they turn up at a particular time, day and place.
 

We want to see a community that really believes in mission that makes a difference, that not only welcomes in strangers, but expects and allows the community to change due to what that new person brings with them.
 

We believe church is about participation and engagement of the majority, rather than being consumerist and led by a few specialists.
 

We are tired of being told the same stuff and want to discover together how to live Christian spirituality meaningfully in our world!
 

We long for their experience of church to inform their experience of the world and vice versa.

This journey will be tough.
Not many will want to share it.
But a few will.

 If that grabs you then get in touch.

So … last night we made history! The gathering got together for the first time in the crypt of Rochester cathedral. There was not as many of us as I would have hoped, but we were able to worship and think with God on the theme of ‘new places’.

One of the families brought us a presentation, put together mainly by Emily, and athought based on new places which got us thinking and mulling over what it is about places that draws or repels us. Howard used the example of Abraham going to new places and we were massively struck by the way that in every new place Abraham went he ‘built an altar’. I had never really noticed this until Howard read from the bible – ‘and he buily an altar’ became a very clear theme which jumped from the text. It was quite poignant I think listening to that as we sat by the stone altar in the Ithamar Chapel. We then went on to chat about why Abraham made a point of building altars before moving into open space (an adapted COTA idea) to give us time to engage with what we had heard.

For us ‘open space’ was time to sit quietly alone, to gaze at an icon and listen to God, or to write prayers to burn with incense. This was a particularly encouraging time as I was able to notice different ages engaging together with ancient spiritual practices. Observing a 5 year old sitting in front of an icon and asking questions and processing what she sees was auite a powerful thing to behold.

After praying our worship continued in sharing cakes and drinks.

I think this was a very encouraging start. Again, our size shouts to us of our vulnerability. Again, I am conscious of how fragile a community we are. Again, however, I feel convinced that God is leading us in some way that we are all unsure of – and again that links with Abraham who had to go, did go, but was never sure of where it was he was supposed to be going to.