Advice?

If you have any suggestions for me, please click on "comments" below any post in order to share your advice. Thank you!

Oh, dear

So no one showed up yesterday. I did get a request to meet one-on-one and another request to get a ride to church on Sunday... I'm so glad I can get the class' input tonight to see what I might be able to do better to enable the undergrads to worship God outside of the church.

Against the Odds

So this is probably a terrible time to try to start up something new because it's the end of the semester between Thanksgiving and Christmas, but I think that it's pretty important to encourage community for the sake of worshiping God and encouraging each other to grow closer to God. Thus, I just sent out this email for tonight:

Hey All!

Admittedly, I'm addicted to coffee.

So even though it's a crazy busy week, if you want to take a break, let's meet in the the new coffee house in BC tonight at 10pm to worship God by sharing stories about how God's working in our lives. I hear the coffee's pretty good and we can pretend that there's a fire in the fireplace. Feel free to bring anything that's been inspiring you be it a poem, song, picture, Bible verse, prayer request, etc. If this is a terrible time for people, we could move it to the weekend. Let me know what you think if you're interested.

Thanks!
-Heather

"Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind,
that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect." -Romans 12:2 (ESV)

So we'll see how it goes. Note: I purposely changed the "Come" to "Let's go".

One more

One more girl told me she wished she could have come last night but she had a conflict. Maybe it's the time...

Stood up

Hm. Well, no one showed up last night at 10pm. I heard from three girls who wished they could come but couldn't. Perhaps people didn't come because they'd have to walk across campus in 28 degree weather. Perhaps I didn't come close enough to them and I'm not sure how exactly to do that. Maybe meet at the coffeehouse on campus? That would be a more awkward place to sing if we're so led, but then again, it is probably more important to have people come right? I know that I enjoyed the time to focus on God but I wonder how to better get more people to come.

Reminder

The email I sent this morning:
Just a reminder that you're all welcome at my apartment, Green Villa 307A, tonight at 10pm to worship and praise God. I'll be coming from a TOE meeting, so if you don't know how to get to Green Villa, I can meet you outside TOE at 9:50pm. How does decaf chai tea and popcorn sound as a snack to accompany our God-time? Hope to see you there! -Heather

Email sent to some undergrads

On Wed, Nov 12, 2008 at 3:51 PM, Heather wrote:

Good afternoon, Friends!

Have you ever noticed that church doors are often locked? If it's true that God's not locked behind those church doors, why do we leave our awareness of God there?

Let's do something radical! Let's get together and worship God outside of church! (Weird, right?)

I've been itching for some good fellowship with people to talk about what God's been doing in our lives, to encourage each other, to pray together and to sing and praise together. I'm really excited and thankful for Jesus' sacrifice and I'd love to celebrate God's love with you.

This coming Tuesday, you're welcome to come over to my apartment to focus upon God at 10pm. It will be an unstructured time so you're welcome to bring stories, poems, songs, Bible verses, pictures... anything you'd like to share about God's awesomeness. If you don't have any idea what's God's been doing lately in your life, you're also welcome to come and hear other people's offerings and to pray. Truly, may this be a time for us to focus upon God who created us, loves us, forgives us, protects us and treats us so much better than we deserve.

If you can't make it, feel free to reply back with prayer requests and we can lift your concerns up. Also, feel free to invite anyone and everyone who might be interested in this opportunity to gather and worship. If I need to bribe you with food, I can do that.

Hope to see you on Tuesday night!
-Heather

P.S. One more thing for Tuesday at 10pm. If you have a moment, could you please email me some images that remind you of God? I'll put them on a powerpoint and we can have it playing during our worship time. Thanks!!

Admission

Unfortunately, I wasn't able to host the first house church/gathering/worship time earlier this week due to various distractions. But I've started spreading the word verbally and have a good response thus far.

It's been difficult to decide who to target and when to host the intended weekly event. I really want to welcome people on the outskirts of the already established IVCF community, the students that I've heard mutter that they miss their high school youth groups. Not that I want to exclude anyone either of course. It looks like 10pm on Tuesday nights might be ideal in my schedule. May God work in spite of me.

So, I'm not sure whether to call the group BOB (Beyond our Noses) or RUBY Tuesday (Refracting Unlimited Belovedness from Yahweh). If this radical, post-modern, Googler gathering is not supposed to be top-heavy, then I'll take other suggestions and leave the decision up to the group that gathers.

Go Out

So I'm thinking about Sweet's recommendation that churches be missional rather than attractional. With this gathering of disciples, I need to think about how to challenge people to go out rather than come in. Where would Jesus be? Not always within comfortable circles of friends in his hometown. Where should we be? ... Challenge up ahead.

Measure of Success

Explaining this idea for the first time to an undergrad, it took some clarifying to convey the non-clubness of this gathering. While I want to host it weekly, people won't be required or guilt-tripped into being there every week. "Only come if the Spirit leads you. If you're not feeling it, then don't worry about it." I'm not sure if this perspective would be advocated by the evangelistic ideas about the necessary organicness of community gathering to become aware of God together. Actually, it is probably more aligned with that train of thought than the traditional church model that often measures spiritual growth using membership statistics.

Speaking of which, last night IVCF, the undergrad Christian organization, led a large-group activity about priorities of small groups using a competitive game with probable scenarios. With a limited amount of time, success was measured by the addition of club members. This reminded me of the chapter in "Organic Community" that challenges religious leaders to measure success differently. The author suggests that the goal of population growth forces the church to become attractional. Sweet would say that we need to do more than draw people in, we need to go out and make disciples! That sounds Biblical, doesn't it?

You may be wondering what my motivation for having such a perspective is. I want to put this whole worship experience into God's hands. May God bring whomever God wants to bring. May our conversation be led by God. May our worship be focused on God. May this be God's time.

You may also be wondering how I will measure success. I think successful ministry is more related to spiritual growth than population growth. Sure, spiritual growth is immaterial and difficult to measure. But are people trying to grow closer to God? Are they encouraged and loved? Are we seeking God's truth together? That is the type of community gathering I want to host. Perhaps I'll never know exactly how to measure success until I see God. I'll keep praying, trying to listen, studying and putting into action what I learn.

Time for Take-Off

Professor Leonard Sweet's class, The MRI Church: Missional, Relational and Incarnational, has opened my mind about radical, contemporary ways that people can gather to glorify God. He has reminded us that Jesus isn't limited behind church walls.

So why not gather on a regular basis mid-week to talk about God and to worship with Spirit-led songs, prayers and testimonies. Community's great but community recognizing the presence of God is better. Therefore, I'm going to send out an email inviting people to a "Beyond Our Noses" get-together specifically intended to focus upon God.

This blog isn't going to exploit personal testimonies or prayer requests. Rather, it's going to track my/our exploration of non-traditional "church" experiences. It might not be easy to break new territory not just intellectually but with action because it may cause us to break some of our habits and mindsets down. We'll find out.

Here's my game plan: Next Tuesday at 6pm, I'm going to invite a bunch of people over. I'm not going to limit the invites to the openly Christian students on campus. There are a bunch of undergrads I know who miss high school youth group and aren't involved in InterVarsity Christian Fellowship. This is something different. Co-ed. No limits. Goal: To look beyond our noses to see God at work and to join God's revolution of love.