Category Archives: gathering

nothing to be afraid of

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It’s been an interesting few days … and I seem to be making endless excuses for not blogging as regularly as I used to or would like to. I guess part of this is that mission, as I see it, that is: getting alongside people and listening and attempting to be an expression of God’s love in a variety of circumstances sounds grand …. but actually it is just me being me and listening, and sometimes responding, to people in a way that it is helpful to them.

In my reflections today I have been thinking more on inculturation. I believe if my faith is to be meaningful today then it has to relate in a significant and authentic way with my culture. The new developing community of people who call ourselves the gathering speak of our faith informing our experience of the world and our experience of the world informing our faith. This is both serious and important to us. A faith that cannot relate to my world is irrelevant.

Different cultures express themselves and faith differently. God, to be God, must be God of all cultures. If that is true, and I believe it is, then it is clear that faith and the living out of that faith will feel and look very different in different cultures. I think it then follows that lifestyles will be different depending upon how those different cultures interpret and are able to express their faith.

A long while ago I remember coming across the Christ we Share pack. The pack illustrates how Christ has been depicted in art in different cultures. Some of the pictures are challenging to our stereotypes of what Christ must have been like. These pictures are, however, an illustration showing how different cultures understand and relate to the Christ figure. Christ, like faith, needs to be in the prevalent culture to be both noticed and relevant.

If people are going to travel their journey of faith with integrity, then there is a requirement for that journey to be understandable within that culture. It makes sense that the same faith can look very different dependent upon the culture that faith expression is sitting within. In the past such stuff have caused concern – but if God is God of all (and if God isn’t then God can’t be God!) then this diversity should be welcomed and embraced.

As we seek to travel together in the gathering we long to travel in a way that embraces, welcomes and cherishes the culture(s) around us. There are loads of groups/churches/organisations/collectives that exist together because they agree about everything. I believe the love of God within creation really flourishes in groups of people that choose to travel together despite not agreeing on everything because they acknowledge that we all bring something unique and valid. I hope that is what the gathering becomes.

?what we are about?

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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.

new places

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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.

new places

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We have just had our last gathering at our home.
It was a good time and we chatted a lot about the parable of the Prodigal in Luke 15.
It was also a sad time as we said bye to people who are not coming on this part of the journey with us.
There is also some fear as we step into the unknown together.

As a small ‘becoming a community’ this is quite a scary time for us and a time where I am particularly aware of how fragile as a group we are. There are a few of us, and we seek to journey together and explore Christian faith in an informal and open setting and in a way that helps us to live out our faith in the 21st century.  We are not really sure what that means, we will try some things and no doubt we will make some mistakes. We do, however, need to try.

We are on the move and our next gathering will be in the Ithamar Chapel in the Crypt of the cathedral. The plan is that this will become our home for the time being as we continue to gather monthly. This is a major step for us as we seek to become more accessible to others who are on a similar journey  – those who wish to have an opportunity to explore more about faith in a  format where they can discuss and question as well as become involved by bringing their gifts and interests to the worshipful life of the community.

As we take this step we look forward to seeing what God will do.  We hope we will join and gather with others as time progresses and we hope we will develop something that is currently missing from the wider body of Christ in this area. We do not believe we are called to create something better or superior … and we don’t believe we are called to duplicate (what would be the point of that?) … we merely feel called to travel together at this point in time.

Personally –  I’m pretty scared! We are out of our knowledge and comfort zone and really do not know what will happen. Please … if you are of the praying kind, please hold us in your prayers over these next few months. I think we are going to need it!

awesome gathering ?

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We had another interesting gathering this afternoon. We took the theme of love from 1 Cor 13 as it was Valentines Day and each group of people brought something to share whether tht be music, liturgy, prayer ideas or something to help us in our looking at the Bible passage.

This was one of the most inclusive gatherings from an involvement point of view that we have had for a little while, possibly as most of us were able to join up together this afternoon.

After our worship together we chatted about the future. We agree that we need to move from our home, and we agree on the location we would like to move to. Watch this space – I think it’s exciting but I don’t want to post anything until I am 100% certain this is going to happen. We also seem to have pretty strong ideas of a name, and an explanantion of our name to sit alongside what we are trying to achieve and who we are. The light is starting to shine through the woods!

Who we are and what we are about is a challenge to us all, although it is summed up with words such as acknowledgment of all being on a journey, of being inclusive and of being participatory rather than merely consumerist. We come together as the body of Christ, accepting of all, with no expectations of each other, in order to learn more about truth together.

It has taken a long time to get to this place along with a lot of hard thinking, praying and talking; and I am pretty excited about where we seem to be at this point in time. I am, however, still very conscious of how fragile we are and how we, as individuals as well as a community, have very little control or knowledge over where we are going or how we get there.  I guess there is a bit of a sense of the Abraham story here as we start to step out in faith.

It’s scary and pretty messy, but there is also something pretty beautiful about this group of people who are all on different stages of a journey with different views and different beliefs but yet are committed to each other and to what we are trying to create.

While in Seattle my new friends there seemed to use the word ‘awesome’ a fair bit. I think maybe they over-use it (but who am I to judge!) A few hours after our gathering, it started to sink in that we have made a pretty major step today. If that is so …. then that’s pretty awesome!

the advent gathering

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I’ve just said goodbye to the people that came to our 6th or 7th gathering – I lose count.
we took Advent as our theme.
The house has been noisy as people have been able to meet up again.
There has been laughter and shouting as the children have played together.
There has been silence and calm as we have lit candles and watched them float on water as we mentally hand things over to God.
There has been contemplation as we consider again the Christmas story.
There has been conversation and delight as we have eaten and drunk together.

I’m not sure where we are all going as a group – but this afternoon we were all able to meet God where we were, whether we are 5, or 55 so I guess something is happening.

gathering pt 5 : the start of our rhythm …

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Yesterday our fledgling community gathered again for the fifth time.

We caught up with each other and shared a little about our summers. We welcomed a new person who had heard about us. We shared communion together and prayed together using incense as a symbol of our prayers rising to God. The children seemed to really enjoy the way we shared communion and the incense prayers. I think the adults did as well.

We then shared with each other what we think church/Christian community should contain. This is the first stage to us as a group developing our rhythm, or rule. of life. WE have already stated that we do not wish to develop a statement of belief as this gives an impression of exclusivity, which is something we are definitely not about. I was intrigued to hear someone suggest that maybe we should have a statement of disbelief … there could be something in that worth exploring!

The stuff we spoke about today was quite key as we tussled with what things meant and how we could do things. For example, one of our values is ‘acceptance’. As we thought about this it became clear this is will mean different things to different people, and is quite a massive concept. How can we, as a community, live authentically to a value of acceptance – is it as simple as saying we accept all. Is that even possible for a group of people to do? Do we need to put boundaries on acceptance – if we do, then is acceptance on our terms really acceptance or are we fooling ourselves to thinking we are inclusive when really we are not? Is there a limit to what we can accept? Was there a limit to what Jesus accepted or did he cross the cultural boundaries of acceptance. If so, what does that mean for us living in 21st century Kent?

Today was exciting, key and amazing. I think we all went away feeling we are further along the journey of this discovery that we have embarked upon – but it’s clear from today that we have a lot more thinking, mulling over, praying, tussling, talking and exploring to do.

That scares me quite a lot but it’s pretty exciting too! I’m not entirely sure where I go with all this next though ….