I have been feeling down recently. It has been hard work over the last three years bringing four churches into one, gathering a new purpose and sense of mission. It has left me (and many of the other key leaders, I sense) feeling a little flat. It is like we are taking a breath - feeling a lull as a new phase of our church beckons.

I don’t know about you, but I find that it when I am feeling like this that I have my most profound God moments.

I had one today.

Some of my worries have centered around the question of how we can sustain our multi-congregational model. Where would the next leaders come from? Are we making it too hard for ourselves?

I walked into the room of our new congregation - called connect. It is a congregation that will be mid-week and provide a low cost meal. We hope that we will be able to gather people who are elderly, struggling etc in our community. Our local council is quite excited about the concept - promising us lists of people who they feel would love to come to a weekly meal and engage in community with others.

Today, was a trial run for the congregation. A meal was prepared and those who form the leadership team gathered to talk about how they would encourage people to connect with God and with each other during the time. I was dragged (well, not really) out of my office to share in the meal - as they had cooked too much food. Oh its a bad job but someone has to do it
What got me really excited was the fact that except for one leader - all the leaders were over 60. I know this is a strange thing to get excited about, but the leaders of the other six new congregations that we have planted over the last three years have come from mainly the under 35 age group.

Here I was engaged in a conversation with a dozen or so 60+ people discussing was this new church experience would look like.

For me, it was a reminder that the emerging Church does not have to gain all its energy and creativity just from young people. These “more mature” aged members of our church were getting excited as they planned and prayed together and re-imagined Church.

Wow what a God experience!

This entry was posted on Thursday, June 26th, 2003 at 2:21 pm by phil and is filed under challenges for the church. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.