It's been 3 weeks since our community weekend together so 'house family' was a time to reflect on how we were all feeling about the next step. We were joined by a Latvian guy who's staying with us temporarily doing an alcohol de-tox and a young couple who'd come for a think about their way forward in community. I've done small community & big community over the past 18 years and there are swings and roundabouts with both. Last night we were checking out that everyone was coping and still on board with the vision to take, what had been a housefamily of 4 and become a housefamily of 6, then 7 and might possibly become 9 or even 11 before too long, forward towards a bigger community scene to make room for all these people and others to join us. We talked about our vision and where we were 'at' now. Not surprising more than a few of us were suddenly enjoying life in a small cottage in the countryside. But what was encouraging was that everyone wanted to make room for more people to join us, particularly guys like our Latvian guest, who need to step out of situations, reflect and re-focus and find a new way forward for their lives. What became obvious was that even the seasoned community members were feeling like Aspirants again.
However, it's often the practicalities of community living that present the challenges so we talked about a few of those. Is everyone getting their washing back, lost their socks? Are the transport arrangements working out for everyone's needs? Can we help the person preparing the meals by booking us & our friends in or out for meals... Do any of the house chores need re-allocating?
What are people's whereabouts and plans? any significant events diaried? Smaller house families are great because you can sort much of this on a day by day basis. However, as the scene grows it becomes much harder and you have to find other more administrative ways of communicating like meals books & transport books and suddenly it starts to feel like it's getting a bit institutional and the danger is we stop talking to each other and just start leaving each other notes.
Big community's great because there's more people around, more space for the scene to exopand, more shared responsibilities. But it also brings fresh challenges as relationships have to stretch to make room for all the extra people, responsibilities and activities.
We all agreed that this was an important phase of strengthening the core of the house family and build those relationships before we added more people or a bigger scene into the equation.
God is seldom in a hurry www.facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid...id...
but often we are.... It's important to let the initial excitement fade and give everyone time to wait on God, count the cost so we move forward together.
Next Chapter a community weekend together booked for 8-10th April. This time in the town centre with a weekend of Outreach planned. Meanwhile back to the daily discipline of working out what it means to be a follower of Jesus in our current situation.
No comments:
Post a Comment