Last weekend we followed up the Start-up nights with a weekend away for people interested in potentially being initiators and pioneers in new local villages around our city. The dream behind this; a dream we believe is from God for us, is that we all own our local communities more. That we get to know the Spreydon church people who live near us and also pray about our local areas and the people who make it up. And this way we get to know and share in the needs of our small bit of Christchurch. Our hope is that we can we take small sustainable and do-able steps to forming small groups of Spreydon people and occasional meals, desert evenings and BBQ’s so we can get to know each other a little more. And we look for one person we could get to know in our neighbourhood and see where that friendship might take us.
It was a great time of exploring, talking and praying together. Out if it came the beginnings of new local village networks in places like Hoon Hay and Halswell.
The whole camp was a very positive time, with lots of banter and laughter, along with input and discussion around next steps on this journey. Village groupings spent quite a lot of time together thinking/dreaming/scheming about what might be the next steps for their area, and the feedback from these discussions was very encouraging. One of the things that defined the weekend for many of us was the presence of 7 babies, one of them only 3 days old! It was interesting to watch these babies being cuddled, comforted and cared for by many different people over the weekend. It struck me that this new initiative is so like a baby, which is just starting out in life, needing nurture, care, love and commitment, but with enormous potential for life and growth. If you want to know more about what’s happening in your area, please make sure you put your name on the map in the Gym (at the end of this weekend’s services) so that someone from your area can get in touch with you as the village networks get underway. It is going to take time to get the networks up and running so please don’t expect an immediate response.
