The Christmas reflective service went very well last night. See Barky's blog for a few more details. I deliberately asked as many people as I could for feedback and it was all very positive. There is such a need for 'space' in this world. It seems to me that everyone's trying so hard to make Christmas special without quite knowing what would be special. There was a little confusion as people arrived - the church was quite dark and some thought it was closed! Others walked in and were confused by the setup as it wasn't obvious where to 'sit'. A little friendly direction did the trick though.
The important thing for me was that I met with God. My reaction to reading that would be to ask 'What do you mean?', but maybe that's something we can explore in the future. I just know that I received a reassurance along the lines of 'It's OK, it'll all work out in the end'.
I had a discussion with one person who was asking where the Holy Spirit fits into all of this (i.e. the ways of doing church that we are attempting to explore). I suppose one answer is everywhere, but the question echoed some of my thoughts of the past weeks. Maybe this is another subject we can address soon.
Merry Christmas to everyone!
(If you're reading this you're probably the sort of person whose mind is trying to analyse the deeper meaning of the word 'Merry' (or if you're really sad 'everyone'). Stop it and have fun!)