Nativity challenge

I attended a meeting at 'the Gate' over in Roath (a church transformed into community theatre venue), at the initation of Sally Humble-Jackson a parishioner in Lisvane, with an inspiring vision to mount an ambitious inter-church Advent project in the city centre, to tell the Nativity story, in a public setting using actors possibly in a tableau format, repeatedly at key times, targeting the mass audience of pre Christmas shoppers during December. She's talked to scores of people in the month since she first came to see me about it, and experienced a broad groundswell of goodwill towards the idea. A good two dozen turned up for the first meeting. Realisation will require extensive detailed planning. Are churches capable of coming out of their self preoccupation enough to make a success of something like this? I wonder.

I couldn't stay until the end of the meeting, so I don't know what the outcome of the meeting was. She's hoping it will happen Advent 2010, so it's going to be a project that my successor and other city centre church leaders will have to engage with rather than me. Sally is appealing to people in all 200 odd churches of the city Borough to participate, with huge enthusiasm and faith that invited a response, which is great. Will she be able to forge a unity in this one evangelistic project that will make a difference to a city in which mainstream ecumenism has no structures or instruments of governance to represent any shared interests whatsoever?

Renewal can often begin with a visionary individual. I'm praying for renewal in this quite specific matter.