The Price is Right

I just got in from our weekly cup of coffee. Billy and I took some time to discuss this coming Sunday night. As customary here, Sunday nights are of a gospel nature. The format is designed for non-christians and the lessons are geared for them to want to become a Christian. It has really become apparent lately that the current format is not connecting with the current culture. The message is always impacting, but the format is not. It was decided some time ago to have on the third Sunday of each month to have a much more informal setting to make it much less threatening and confusing to those who are not accustomed to the traditional setting. We usually have a cup of tea afterwards so we can get to know each other better. There is no doubt that fellowship and encouragement is crucial to us as Christians! I remember growing up hearing from different people that we need to go to all the meetings that the church had and would quote Heb 10:25, but never finished the verse with the why. We need to meet together to encourage someone each other. I need to go to fellowship and encourage!

I spoke in my last post about about our plans for the next third Sunday. We had decided to have the normal worship setting and then have a time of fellowship afterwards. We really think that some of the youth (and other church members) will come along who hadn’t before. We are going to play the Price Is Right/Luck of the Cards. It will be structured as a mix between the two games. We will have a bidding round and then four games including Cliff Hangers (pictured above) and Hole-in-one (sorry, no Plinko. Maybe next time. The game was kicked about though). We are really hoping to bridge the gap between the congregation and the youth. Building relationships is the key. We are going to try to get the teens to make some of the things needed on Friday night. If they take some ownership of it, they will more likely come! For the worship time we are going to have two short lessons; one by Billy and one by me. I will talk about the Price is Right. Jesus paid the price. Billy is going to then say because of that, we need to play our cards right. Play not the way the world plays, but live the way God wants us to because of what he has done for us. The night will start off with a cup of tea and pieces which may or may not be made on Friday night. All in all it should be a great night. Please be praying it is a success! It has the potential to be a huge step forward for the congregation here. I am sure God is leading us here.

This Church Needs Coffee

It always amazes me how God works. It is apparent to me that God is really working through the times when we go and have coffee. I think that we may have the idea that the church really starts to move and grow while we are together as a body; whether through preaching, teaching, praying, singing, giving, etc. While that may be true to an extent, some of the real growth and movement happens in the planning stages that the leadership engages in, and for us, that is over a cup of coffee.

One can learn a lot by what another person drinks. Billy gets the same thing every time: Medium Vanilla Latte. John usually has Toasted Marshmallow. Angie gets coke because she doesn’t drink coffee. I like to mix it up and try every flavour. Billy and John get the same thing every time. They know what works and they stick with it. Angie doesn’t give into the peer pressure of having to do what everyone else is doing, and I am not hard to please; I am fine with just about anything (ask my parents what my response was when asked where I wanted to go to eat. It was almost always, “I don’t care).

These past couple weeks have been especially good. There have been a lot going on. I mentioned in my last blog how we are trying some new things. On Monday nights we are taking time with those who don’t want to play football to make cards for anyone who has a birthday. We realize there is a gap between the older and younger and we figure we can have the younger reach out to the older; take the first step if you will. How great would it be for anyone to get a shower of cards for any reason? It is nice knowing others are thinking about us.

The teens have really been coming on as well. A few of them have started throwing out some ideas of how to bring everyone together. A couple weeks ago, a few of the girls decided to maybe spend the time on Friday nights possibly doing some visiting or things of that sort. It is great to see people realizing things for themselves and being prepared to move with it!

Last weekend we took about 14 teens to the Aberdeen Youth Weekend. It was a blast. A lot of prayers went up for that weekend that it would be impacting on some who we were unsure about whether they cared about God or not. They rose to the occasion and on the whole were great. We spent the weekend at the Aberdeen YMCA. There were about 60 young folk there. I did a lot of the song leading led a discussion group. There was a hall to play football, a pool room and in the basement there was a snooker room. As Billy said, “Snooker is a man’s game, unlike Pool.” He is right. I didn’t get a chance to play cause the teens were on the tables the whole weekend which was brilliant! While we were away, I was responsible for the Saturday night meeting. I did something a little different. I will have to talk about it in the next post. It is hopefully a small step forward.

Yesterday we went for coffee again. We had a great discussion about what the church needs. We decided for the lesson at last night’s class to do something a bit different. We got into discussion groups and asked two questions: “Why don’t you want to come to church?” and “What could we do to make you want to come?” We got some great responses. We are going to look at those in the next while and make the 3rd Sunday night gospel meeting more of a full night. In the past we just had the normal service and then had a cup of tea. That is great, but we may add another element as well. We may have some sort of fellowship activity with it. We thought about playing Deal or No Deal or Millionaire. To be honest it is kinda boring to show up and not really get much fellowship. Fellowship is so key!