The search continues …

I’ve been on holiday recently and had opportunity to introduce 3 more sets of friends to geocaching. Unfortunately, as usual, these are all friends who don’t live near me, so the possibilities for a geocaching emerging church are again extremely limited – more like a virtual circle of keen geocachers!

On all occasions when we were out, the walking between caches provided an opportunity for us to talk about church where we are; we’ve passed information about how mutual friends from my old church are doing, and also talked about how the church I serve is doing. The walking is a good space for that.

We’ve also taken the opportunity to admire God’s creation, seeing wildlife and nature up close, and often involving dead animals. If I’d been with people new to faith, I would have taken those opportunities to talk about how life always includes death and a fight for survival (some might say a bit too much Darwinianism here (?), but it is a bicentennial year!) – my doctrine teacher in College always used to talk about nature being ‘red in tooth and claw’ (a quote from Alfred Lord Tennyson's In Memoriam A. H. H., 1850 apparently). I’d have also talked about the fact that God never said becoming a follower or disciple was an easy road.

Although I’m disappointed about the lack of friends or new contacts I’m making locally, I’ve again take comfort in the fact that the people I’ve introduced to geocaching have all said ‘This might be a good activity for the whole church to do’ or ‘I’d like to do this with some of my non-Christian friends – it could be a useful communal activity that would allow us time together to chat about all sorts of things’.

Clearly geocaching is a good activity, which interests some people, but it does require a good friendship base, which I don’t have. Still, there’s still another year to go …. or is there?!