Small Communities

As a small choirboy I used to enjoy lettuce. Not when it was served on a plate, I was, and remain, very suspicious of all types of salad, but when lettuce appeared in the Nunc Dimittis at Evensong:  ‘Lord now lettuce thou thy servant depart in peas,’ (snigger!) This then should make Hebrews 10:19-25 my all time favourite bit of the Bible as it is an astonishing four lettuce passage, perhaps a bit like a Michelin 4-star restaurant. Let us draw near to God, let us hold unswervingly to the hope we profess, let us spur one another on towards love and let us not give up meeting together. That fourth lettuce is the perennial head-banging-against-the-wall challenge to all Christian leaders - how on earth do we configure our churches in such a way as to actually encourage the process of meeting together so that followers of Christ worship together, remain faithful and build up one another (the first three lettuces.) Often our genuine, thoughtful efforts seem to achieve quite the opposite.

Regardless of any potential catastrophe, Revd Lee Barnes and myself will be working together over the next six months to help us get much better at meeting outside our Abbey services. The Abbey picture is a mixed one. Many are growing in small communities, groups of all shapes and sizes, but many aren’t. Many are hosting, leading or pastoring a small group, but many aren’t. Some groups are growing, others are closing. Some see the point of meeting, some don’t. So can you help us in these three ways?

1.      If you currently lead a small group would you send the details of your current membership, and what happens, to Sandie in the parish office

2.      If you would like to be part of a small community but you aren’t, would you contact Sandie in the parish office with your details

3.      If you would like to be trained as a small community leader and grow in a new Christian ministry would you please contact Neill or Lee

Please be patient with us as we grasp the lettuce and develop a Small Communities leadership team to oversee this discipleship dimension of church, and also provide new small groups for those enquiring about the Christian faith. We’ll be providing resources and different models of small community for those who want to meet weekly, fortnightly, monthly or annually (the last isn’t a genuine option), during the day, in the evening, in a pub, on a boat, by Skype etc.

Finally, for those of you leading a group already who would like to know where the Abbey teaching series are going in 2012 and prepare accordingly, in May we have a four-week series on Money; from June to August we will be looking at the Life of Moses; and from September through to Advent we will be studying Jesus’ one-to-one encounters in John’s gospel. Then we all sing ‘O come lettuce adore him, O come lettuce adore…’