“So what are your congregation like?” came the question at a dinner party.
“Oh they’re wonderful,” came Ruth’s reply, “you couldn’t hope to meet a nicer bunch of people. They are warm and welcoming and they have a real desire to see the place thy live transformed for the better”.
With a slightly puzzled look upon his face the dinner guest made his response. “I didn’t mean that, what are your numbers like?”
#truestory
How did we get here? I’m in St Matthew’s Church Grosmont. There are 15 well kept racked real ales in the corner. The room is packed. There is a small ukulele orchestra playing The Lion Sleeps Tonight on the chancel steps!
How did we get here? It’s a Friday night. It’s my day off. I’m away in a strange land (ok, the Yorkshire Moors) and somehow I’m in a Church of England ancient village church. We got here because they were telling us about this in the pub last night. In a different town. By “they” I mean “people who have no link to the church”. “They” got me into church tonight. The “non churched”. And they weren’t the only ones. There have been three different groups of people telling us about how good this is going to be! None of whom are part of the church.
People who don’t go to church are telling the world that The Church(TM) are a positive thing? This doesn’t compute.
And everyone is so enthusiastic about the gift that the church have given them. “This is Grosmont, there’s nothing to do here” is what we were told “but this is going to be excellent”.
And it is!
This is the second hymn Metanoia played at yesterday’s Blessēd big bash in The Big Top at Greenbelt. It’s going to make a few appearances at The Rock Mass over the next year or so.
I’ve spent the last four weeks doing activity days with 5-11 year old’s at Holy Nativity. Today we looked at The Good Samaritan and “who is my neighbour”? Two minutes and seventeen seconds of animation isn’t going to fill your four hours up but they all shouted “let’s watch it again” afterwards.
I think it is cute.