We had a great team meeting tonight.
Jenny led us again in a brilliant worship experience and then we spent some time grappling with the question of what incarnation means and looks like here in Brighton.
For the worship experience Jenny gave us all a piece of chocolate to eat (slowly) and as we ate to savour it and to reflect on the goodness of God – to savour it. She asked us to reflect on the day and see where God had been present – she read a selection of scripture passages, then we shared some God moments and finished with a time of group prayer.
The chocolate idea (which she told me she stole off the phuture
website really connected with me. I didn’t hear much of scripture, because I was reflecting on the whole sense of being with God as something to savour and enjoy slowly.
We began exploring this word ‘incarnation’ which gets a fair bit of airplay in emerging church circles and started to grapple with what it means and what its implications are. I believe its the core theological lens for us to view our mission thru.
I must confess to simply and unabashedly ripping off Mike Frost and Alan Hirsch’s stuff from chapter 3 of their book, but it really is some of the best stuff out there.
We got thru about 1/3 of what I had planned, but that didn’t matter at all. The discussion was really engaging and some excellent questions were raised about our role as missionaries.
We finished by looking at Paul’s call to be ‘all things to all people’ and were discussing what that means for us when we came to a close.
The question for us to reflect on this week is what does all things to all people look like?
How do we do this and remain true to who we are?
Can we really be all things to all people?
I am a huge Paul fan! I love seeing his missionary heart and his ‘whatever it takes’ attitude. Next week we’ll spend some time on the remainder of the stuff. We still might not get thru it. That said, the aim is not to ‘get thru’ but to really key into the issues that are live for us.
I love a healthy discussion where we seem to be learning and stretching one another so tonight was a lot of fun for me!