How can we be a community when some don't get home until 8pm each day, we're all flat out doing stuff, and this is England so we're just not that good at this sort of thing... As we talked about being like Jesus, we came up with some ideas and questions.
Action 1 - Jane to check when we might spend an evening cooking together to provide food for the night-shelter.
What we talked about...
- Following Sunday's 'Harvest Festival' we looked briefly at how this ritual found it's way into the church courtesy of Wikipedia
"Increasingly, churches have linked harvest with an awareness of and concern for people in the developing world for whom growing crops of sufficient quality and quantity remains a struggle"
- We then talked more broadly about how as God's people we might be Jesus body to people in need. We read Matthew 25 where Jesus taught that as we loved people in need we also loved him.
And all the believers lived in a wonderful harmony, holding everything in common. They sold whatever they owned and pooled their resources so that each person's need was met. They followed a daily discipline of worship in the Temple followed by meals at home, every meal a celebration, exuberant and joyful, as they praised God. People in general liked what they saw. Every day their number grew as God added those who were saved.
2 challenges
- There were 2 challenges for us that we talked about
2. How to love the 'poor' in a way moving beyond simply giving money
The 2 are related, and this is something we might work out together. But whatever we do, doing stuff comes from a place of being his so that what we do is in his strength, by his grace, and enjoys and shows his love.
Stuff we could do:
Ideas and thoughts we had...
- Meals. Make meals for the night-shelter - Jane to check the earliest date we could do this for - perhaps group on 14th could be a cooking evening together at Andy & Jane's!
- Sam. Pray for Jan's friend Sam - for healing, pray for Jan to have faith and be full of the Holy Spirit, pray that Sam comes to Alpha.
- Weekend Away again. So helpful to get time together and be a community beyond the 1.5-2 hours at Community Group. Maybe we should do this again - what do people think?
- Inspiration. Get people to come in and encourage us and help us think about what we might do
- Phil Hanks who has been serving at the Night-shelter,
- Tom and Marianne know someone working on the Southampton projects Jane talked about.
Stuff to consider:
- 'Not a one-off / build genuine relationships and trust' a key theme to how this will work.
- Jane talked about how this happened through consistent commitment in the Kids Club when visiting homes
- Jan reminded us of Phil Hanks story about only having actual conversations with people at the Nightshelter after helping there for a year - 'they think Christians are just weird' was i think the comment he made.
- Wealth a distraction.
Jan talked about how for us giving money is easy but can almost absolve from the responsibility of actually building relationships with people - the very means by which they will become open to the good news of the Gospel!
- Building Bridges. How do we build the bridge between church and people in need - a consensus was that Sunday mornings are perhaps not as well placed as they might be to welcome those not already members, but other ideas came up - see 'Stuff we could do'! We talked about the dangers of considering the radical social expression of love and the church as different bodies, and talked about how, as Winfam, we might grow in our conviction about how are Jesus body to the poor. It is for God's glory that his church will show his multicoloured wisdom and be littered with stories of grace.
Needs around us in Winchester:
- Families - families without fathers.
- Parenting - people who need help parenting.
- Everyday stuff - the everyday needs of the poor - e.g. need to plumb in a washing machine.
- Finance - people in debt need help
- Drugs - big problems in Winchester, drugs tend to be prescribed to avoid on-street sales, but then often prescription drugs are sold-on and fuel on-street sales.
Encouraging Stories:
Stories of places that God's people have found ways to love oneanother as a spiritual community, and reach out and love their wider communities:
- Jane shared some other examples of *working* communities, one being a community in New Zealand (Jane can you post the link on here?) and the other being in Southampton on the following Website which we then looked at together.
- The evenings run post just10 had a a limited response, but people came for help on some pretty vulnerable topics - what would happen if we actually told people about a service like this and ran it in a nice warm, welcoming place!
Isaiah 61
we finished by reading this and then praying...
