Last week we had a really big gathering at SFC for dinner. We had to add two tables and it was our biggest meal ever, full of kids and lots of wonderful adults. After it ended I realized two things: Our event that night was only just okay church planting is really hard.
In some ways we have arrived. We have our dining room filled pretty much to capacity with people we didn’t even know 2 years ago. These folks show up to share and work together to try to live in a more holy way. But this Sunday we didn’t quite have enough food, which meant microwaving some old pasta. That’s not really hospitality at it’s best. The kiddos were hyper on post-Halloween sugar and the question I asked to lead the discussion didn’t generate the kind of passionate engagement we normally find at dinner. No one went away hungry, the children made cool fall bracelets, and we did touch on some great moments of insight, but it was not something that we can do every week with out wearying our people and ourselves. Just at the moment where we are where we should be we have to work on improving our dinners and thinking about how to divide and grow.
This made me realize that in this work we will never arrive. We will never get to a place where we just exist as a community. We will always be looking for what’s next. Part of me finds this to be terrifying and part of me thinks it is exhilarating to always be creating and working to make our community more fully what it could be. The Wesleyan in me thinks this is all very going on to perfection, while the realist in me sees that it is a hell of a lot of work.
This week dinner was better. We did lecto divina and I made some great pasta with fresh veggies in it while still offering soup for those who don’t do pasta. But those things aren’t really why dinner was better. In the middle of the week we held a visioning session and I was reminded that we have incredible people with amazing insights already leading and working to enrich this community. Together we are on a journey that will always call us to the next thing. I could not be more grateful to take on this challenge with these amazing people.
-Eilidh
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| Visioning night fruits |
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