About 35 of us from a wide variety of churches and mission organisations gathered yesterday, 4th June, for 24 hours of friendship and exploration. We kicked off with a time of sharing and updating and praying for one another. We had an especially great dinner together - great because the standard of cuisine in Christian Retreat Centres aren't normally that great! After dinner Roger Ellis shared a paper he had written, 'Where does the new church movement go from here?'. We'll publish the paper on here soon. There was some lively discussion after which we opened a few bottles of wine and whiled away the rest of the evening.
After breakfast we spent some time in worship and prayer before Bishop Graham Cray led a session on maintaining our personal spiritual life. He talked about developing regular sabbath rhythms weekly, monthly, annually but stressed the importance of changed character not simply changed practise. The discipline of rest and renewal is simply a framework to allow God's Spirit to do his work in us.It's about the 4th time we've met like this and it is starting to feel like real community. We'll use this blog to let people know about future dates, conferences and events that we think might be helpful. We're also creating a Facebook group to keep in touch.
2 comments:
A great time was had by all. I have been thinking having been provoked by Graham Crays comment 'how much longer will the new churches be called the new churches?'. I agree- how can the movement possibly be called new? Except perhaps by comparaison with the orthodox church or something Any suggestions? Pehaps we should come up with some suggestions and get the ball rolling. Lets start a rename the new churches movement! It was coined for us by David Brierly I think anyway.
Newish Churches!!!
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