Last night we had two friends around for dinner and in the conversation I asked them how they would feel if I invited them to come to church with me (which I can’t do at present – so it was a harmless suggestion!).

It generated a good discussion.

The guy said he would be very apprehensive because of past experiences of family geting involved and some very ugly stuff happening – separations and suicides. He said he would likely tell me to ‘back off and let me find my own way’. The girl said she felt like it would be on a par with being invited to an Amway meeting… But at the same time she also said she has such respect for my wife that she would probably say ‘yes’ anyway.

These are not ‘church goers’ so it is good to hear their feedback.

I sense we need to hear more from the people who are not coming to our stuff. If we do then we might just figure out how to connect with them and help them connect with God.

I’ve been preparing a ‘sermon’ all day.

Its been both inspiring and difficult. Preaching is where my perfectionist tendencies show up! I can’t stand up and waffle – I work on the principle that if it doesn’t grip me, it sure as hell won’t grip anybody else.

I am speaking at Katanning Baptist Church this weekend and I am looking for a new angle on the theme of mission and church. I have many angles, but I am bored with them…

I am bored with the sermon I have preached the last 8 times! Its got some great content, but it just isn’t firing me and I sense God wants me to head in another direction for this crew.

I am also finding that I have way too much stuff I want to say to try and contain it in 25 minutes.

My head is in a fug after so many hours of looking at a computer screen. Tired, headachey…

Some days I hate preaching.

Ok enough whinge – back to it…

Yesterday we met as a Brighton team to discuss some form and structure for 2004. If you read a previous post of mine you would know that I am a fan of structure of some sort.

In previous meetings where we have discussed this, we seem to have ‘spun our wheels’ and got bogged – I was never sure why.

On Friday Danelle felt God was telling her that we needed to pray for clarity and pray that the atmosphere of ‘confusion’ we had been experiencing would lift. She felt the confuddled planning meetings we had been having were a result of a spiritual dynamic at work. We prayed Friday evening for that and the next morning we took time to pray again that we would have clarity and agreement on a way forward.

It happened!

We had allocated from 9.30-4.00pm to discuss and map out the plan for 2004, but amazingly we were all done by midday and people were very positive about the way ahead.

So we had lunch, hung out for a bit and had a cruisy afternoon.

Thanks God…

Over the next few days I’ll post some thoughts on what we will be doing as a team next year and some of the issues we have been working thru.

I am feeling relieved to have clarity as I have actually felt a significant sense of depression prior to recent team meetings as well as anxiety after them. I am not a melancholic person and I don’t get ‘down’ easily so I knew something was amiss.

It seems we are in a spiritual battle of sorts… (well hello!)

• marley me free

I’m still mulling thru my response to Liquid Church.

I reallly like Pete Ward’s bold imagining and his attempt to earth things in both their theological and sociolgical setings.

Probably the only thing I am really pondering is his lack of emphasis on the need for regular gatherings which we would call church.

I re-read Acts last night to check out how the ‘ecclesia’ is expressed there and I have a feeling that it depends a bit on how you read it as to what you see. Was the ‘church in Jerusalem’ a group that all met together or were they a conglomerate of believers with some form of leadership / apostolic oversight who met spontaneously and regularly but without a set pattern?

Have we read Acts thru the eyes of our own ecclesiology?

I’m not sure but I sense we need to explore what Ward is saying and ask if we have had blind spots because of our conditioning, or if the church really needs to be a weekly gathering.

I feel uncomfortable messing with that idea – I feel uncomfortable with church as a network of communications – but is that just my prejudice?

I am so deeply conditioned that it is hard to imagine Ward’s ideas could be allowable let alone the way the church may function optimally in a missional context.

Still chewing!