Sunday, January 14, 2007

The meaning of life

Just left the BBC's ghastly new show The Meaning of Life - lots of air-headed celebs trying to make us think they know something about anything that matters. It makes grumpy old men look intelligent and bursting with insight!

Anyway, today we had our lunchtime church meeting and here are a couple of reflections on it.

firstly, it went really well. About 130 sat down to eat lunch and chat. The atmosphere was really good - people chatting with people they'd not spoken to before. In fact one table didn't get around to talking about the subject in hand because they were having such a good time getting to know each other.

Secondly, it was great to have a couple being voted into membership who were actually present at the meeting. It meant that everyone voting to have them as members knew what they looked like because they were standing there in front of them! In fact when I asked whether we should welcome them aboard, everyone applauded - which I took to be 'yes'.

I've had one email so far which was overwhelmingly ecstatic about the whole thing. So I think we'd have to say it was a success.

I think we made one basic error and that was moving from the hall where we had lunch into the worship area for the second half of the meeting. When we do it again, we won't do that; we'll stay put in the hall and have the whole meeting sitting round the tables - there's something about facing each other in small groups that opens people up and fuels conversation.

No doubt, I'll reflect some more during the week, but I'd say it was a really positive experience and I urge you to try it at your churches.

2 comments:

Wulf said...

That sounds like a solid result - glad to hear it went well. Out of interest, what is the total membership of your church - are you looking at 130 out of 150 or out of 1300?

simon said...

We're talking about 130 out of 380 -not great but getting on for twice the turnout we get mid-week.