My first cache

This week I finally managed to ‘set a cache’ of my own – what a saga. The rules of geocaching include no solicitation for trade and no religious enticement (or something along those lines). So I based my cache on our church building, picking up on the fact that it had been bombed in WWII and had then become resurrected. Unfortunately, another rule is about how far apart caches have to be from one another, and our building is too close to another cache, so I had to use our building as a spot for further clues to a final destination – as I write I think how similar this is to our Christian life! Setting all that up in ‘virtual web-land’ took over a week!

I was well chuffed to find someone outside the building looking for clues this Sunday morning, but unfortunately I wasn’t able to stop and chat as I was busy sorting out a Love Feast that was occurring inside at the same time (now if I’d been a real people person, instead of the leader organising, then I’d have made time and invited them in …). I told the geocacher I’d set the cache and pointed her in the right direction, but being in ‘uniform’ seemed to put her off wanting to chat – can’t imagine why.

I’ve also sorted out a few possible hides for the Half Term venture, but have yet to hear if anyone will sign up and brave the cold – it’s been biting cold up here, with the inevitable forecasts of snow.

I see one of my colleagues has written about ‘Attractional v. Incarnational’ (perhaps in response to mine), citing Stuart Murray, and I agree that both are helpful/desirable; equipping people to incarnate the gospel in all areas of society is very important. I don’t think we’ll get away from a mixed economy of church very quickly; in fact, I’m not sure that we will ever want to get away from both. What concerns me, though, is how infrequently I hear members of my congregation seeing God in their everyday lives and talking about it, or seeing the possibility of spiritualising everyday things and being able to talk about them in a spiritual way. I don’t think they don’t know God, it just doesn’t seem to be something they talk about a lot. And if we can’t talk about it, how are we ever going to expose others to Him? Maybe they’re just naturally people who ‘incarnate’ rather than storytellers?

Most likely I’m just deaf or don’t listen …

Attractional v. Incarnational

Half term is bearing down on us all, and I’ve decided to give it another go like I did last summer and advertise some guided geocaching around our town on two afternoons in half term, in the hope of connecting with some new people. So I’ve modified my original adverts and will be putting those around town to try to attract people.

There is also another event which will happen at the end of March, which is about getting fit, so I’m going to offer to take some people on a geocache to try it out, as walking is good for you. So I have two things to prepare for. I need to set some caches that we can look for, but just to protect the ones already in the vicinity, I’ll do some dummy ones of my own close to the venues. I’ve also asked a local newspaper if they can do a spiel for me about the two things. The newspaper guy had never heard of geocaching and was really intrigued when I explained, pointed out an article from the Telegraph weekend section in the last few weeks and then told him that it had started off this week’s episode of CSI. He said it must be cool if it’s on CSI! So I must set to work and come up with some details for him to polish up and put in the paper.

Of course, one of the problems with an outdoor activity, whether as the basis of a possible church or not, is that the weather dictates if you go geocaching or not. I’m a fair weather geocacher! So pray for sunshine on all three days (17th & 18th February and 20th March).

However, what is interesting me, or in reality is concerning me, is that my project has now become an ‘attractional’ thing with advertising, rather than an ‘infiltration/get to know the people and watch God at work through what’s going on’ thing. One of the main reasons for this is that the geocaching group I found always goes caching on Sunday. As a minister it’s pretty difficult to take Sunday off and go and enjoy myself!!! So much for Frost & Hirsch’s idea of infiltrating your own social networks and being incarnational within that environment (p51)!!!

I guess if I wasn’t a minister it would be easier, so does that mean that all new churches have to be started by non-ministers? It’s just like when I was at University – I could never go windsurfing or rambling because they were always on Sunday, when I was at church. In those instances, the Christians went on Saturday and were known as the God-squad windsurfers or Bible-basher ramblers. I don’t think it’s the first time someone has said go out and be church, rather than come in and do church.

What is church?

Coming up on a couple of my fellow bloggers’ pages is the question ‘Is this church?’ I watched Rob Bell’s ‘Everything is Spiritual’ DVD this morning. Here’s his definition of what church is (after 59 minutes of brilliance):

‘a group of people bonded together in their pursuit of God – obviously they are learning to see God in each other and God is powerfully present in their midst – but they are being given eyes to see the divine everywhere they go’

If he’s right, then all of the activities our blogging group is involved in would/could fall under this definition of church, as we meet and discuss 'Questions of Heaven' (loved the song, Sylvie) – even meeting in the Scooterworks bar for the ReSource weekend!

Reflections on Resource emerging church weekend

Amidst the snow and ice covering parts of London in January I found the Resource weekend – an opportunity to experience first-hand the two most well-known emerging church centres: Moot and Grace. I had a great time and found it really helpful to actually be there and see what their services are like. Unfortunately, that (the service) only gives you such a small part of the picture, as each community meets in small groups too.

Whilst not criticising, the main thing I noted was that in both cases the community seemed to be mainly centred on disaffected churchgoers (perhaps more so with Grace than Moot). Speaking to someone from Grace, they acknowledged that they don’t seem to attract non-believers; they had thought that if they got the worship right, then unchurched people would come, but this isn’t the case. To me, Grace seemed very much more ‘alt.worship’ and less missional, whereas Moot did seem more outward focussed in that it did seek to have activities specifically designed for stressed City-types and the underprivileged in their area. I wish I’d made more time to chat with the leaders of both churches about this.

However, one of the things that confused me the most was the lack of actual teaching/preaching during the services. Again, speaking to one of the ‘leaders’ or senior members of Grace to ask about how they would address an issue on one of the thought-provoking cards they were using without having a sermon, the response was very much ‘you have to earn the right to be able to speak to me on a one-to-one basis; you can’t preach down to me from on high’.

If emerging church fails to attract unchurched people, then how is it any better than traditional church? Or is my question an indication of the fact that I still think in terms of ‘attraction’ rather than ‘going out’? And if my question is wrongly based on ‘attraction’ v ‘going’ when it should be based on influencing the unchurched where they are, then doesn’t it make it all the more important that the life we live as individuals needs to be massively counter-cultural for there to be any obvious difference between we Christians in our everyday world and those who don’t know Christ? And does anyone really care about such counter-cultural differences in a postmodern society?

My confusion seems to come in two (and probably more) parts: (i) my need to see new people being won for Christ (a throwback from my denominational background) and (ii) an inability to picture church as something other than what happens on Sunday in a meeting based on didactic Scripture-teaching.

HELP!!!