So the St Tom's Weekend Away was a few weeks ago. But thoroughly enjoyed by the 75 people in attendance. As well as relaxation and refreshment, the weekend provided the opportunity to think about the future.
Below are the links to some notes for each talk as well as the audio recording of two of the talks. We hope that this page may be an opportunity for people to reconnect with the camp material and for those who were not on the camp to benefit from it too.
I draw your attention particularly to the community discussion (Talk 4) and below you may wish to post any comments that you may have regarding these talks and discussions.
Talk 1: "Love One Another"
Notes
Talk 2: "Forgive One Another"
Notes Audio
Talk 3: "Show Hospitality to One Another"
Notes Audio
Talk 4: Community Discussion, "Growing Together in Faith"
Notes
Using the sub-headings as set out in the report, my comments are:
ReplyDeleteFACILITIES:-
Flexible, modern facilities are vital:
KITCHEN:- a decent kitchen with commercial stove/oven, several microwaves, and a commercial dishwasher, plus the usual kitchen accoutrements makes activities such as morning tea, breakfasts, lunches, dinners, suppers, group events, etc logistically simpler......time and effort is not taken from the event itself to cobble together refreshments and clean up after.
CLASSROOMS - Rooms with whiteboard, screen, tables, chairs, easels and heating/cooling make Sunday School (by whatever clever title), coaching classes, Saturday School, committee meetings, small groups meetings, etc more viable and workable events.
AUDITORIA - Well resourced auditoria are essential for corporate worship, rituals (weddings/funerals etc), lecture series, annual meetings, parish meetings, large-scale displays, etc
HALL - An enclosed "open space" (not a contradiction!!!) is essential for social activities (eg badminton), youth activities, children's events, dinners, and fundraising events.
GROWTH
A serious two-edged sword!
- Too many is probably 150
- larger congregations tend to promote the formation of cliques because knowing all is very difficult
- larger congregations make it easy for people to opt out of interaction and get 'lost' unless they belong to one of the cliques.....a situation we have the beginnings of already
- if we get larger we will need to learn from the Mormons where everyone has a 'calling' to some responsibility in the congregation
- a larger congregation simultaneously needs (a) very structured small grouos which become de facto nurture and pastoral entities, and (b) carefully structured full-body events and worship which embrace the groups into a single body.
- it is important to grow from the perspective of bringing people to know Jesus and then loving them into the body. It may be equally important to then run as several separate service congregations to meet the needs of all participants (eg. new Christians, those intellectually inclined, those seeking good basic guides for living, those speaking Cantonese, those speaking Mandarin, etc.
MINISTRY
(a) Catering for socio-economic diversity and for educational diversity are significant weaknesses of our VERY yuppie church....we need to really work on these aspects
(b) Worship diversity is Ok at the level of family/children/youth experience, but is largely unexplored for those seeking a more meditative, or traditional, or quieter worship experience.
(c) PLC Boarders - may be a place we could have a role. In the past Planet Shakers and Crossways have proved attractive for the Christians at PLC
(d) Teaching - need for much more focus on biblical approaches to current social issues. We are very well served in Bible exegesis, but this is only one aspect of Christian teaching and learning.
It is really good to see that we have made an 'entry level' attack on these issues...i hope we might break them down into focussed sectors and explore them further as a congregation.