God on Mondays - fourth year

This afternoon we re-started 'God on Mondays' in Tredegarville school. This is the start of our fourth year. One year in St James' and two in school, since the church closed. Much to my delight we were as many gathered as there had been at the end of the summer term, with eleven children and nineteen parents and teacher - the teachers are so supportive. It was good to see familiar faces again. I wonder what we need to do to make this venture grow a little more, and may be get back to the numbers we attracted when it was held in a 'real' church building? In this experience hungry culture the ambience of pointed arches and stained glass did count for something, and although we brought the font into school last year, and placed it in a prominent place where it ceerinaly gets used to affirm the schools Christian identity and ethos, we've only managed a mock baptism there as part of the year three teaching programme. No takers for real as yet. Being there partiently is all we can do for the time being.

Change in view at 'God on Mondays'

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Due to our holiday in Corsica, today was the first 'God on Mondays' during this half term, spent telling the story of St John the Baptist. This coming weekend I'm away and not back until Monday night, leaving just one more opportunity before the end of term school service, telling the story of St James the Great. Our parish 'heroes'.
Both were martyrs in the proper sense of the word, dying rather than killing others for the sake of God's truth. How I hate that perversion of language so commonplace in the Arab world. I am not persuaded by that semantic arguments on this. Martyrs witness at the cost of their own lives to the truth of God. If suicide bombers witness to anything it is to be demonic belief that might is right, that violence can redress injustice - this is the opposite of what has stood throughout twenty centuries of Gospel faith.

I hope that church school children at least will grow up with the right ideas.

Next term a significant number of our God on Mondays regulars will be moving on to secondary school. I'm going to need to rethink what we are doing and consult about how to attract the interest of a new wave of people to join in. Things change. It's been going two years now.

The faith communities research project moves forward slowly. The Steering Group appointed by the City Centre Churches Together met for a second time tonight. Our University sociology researchers start work in earnest on 1st July. I'm feeling less neurotic about it all now that more people are involved, even if progress is slow.

Meetings that matter - God on Mondays

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Having run 'God on Mondays' successfully for the past eighteen months in partnership with a clerical colleague, I honestly wondered how I might continue to sustain something worth attending, now that I am working on my own. When we started, Jenny organised others from St James' to provide refreshments. This looked as if it might stop when we moved pastoral operations into the school, but it didn't. Julie, one of the school mums, a regular participant since the beginning, baptized at the 'God on Mondays' service this time last year, offered to help organise refreshments, and has ended up taking charge of it. She enjoys doing it and that just gives me so much pleasure.

But, how to continue without the worship becoming literally a one man band? For me one of the best things about 'God on Mondays' was working with a female colleague. The complementary partnership of a man and a woman offering worship and teaching is just a great way of breaking the institutionalised mould of expectations - and it goes down well with people.

I put my problem to the teaching staff by posing the question of sustainability. If far too much depended on me, then it might fail if I got sick. Could anybody help? The answer wasn't long in coming. Kelly, one of the class teachers, responsible for Computers in the school curriculum, and thus someone I'd already got to know as Governor interested in these matters, offered her help. She's an evangelical Christian, actively involved in her own church community, and therefore not a newcomer to leading worship.

After an initial conversation and a planning session for the term, we re-started 'God on Mondays' this afternoon, with Kelly leading worship and me telling the story of the Road to Emmaus, and playing the guitar, as usual. It all went very well, and quite surprisingly to me, Kelly admitted her nervousness afterwards, despite her being a confident class teacher, at home with the kids. Well, I guess that was quite a new role for her. Such courage to be prepared to have a go at it.

It was a most encouraging new beginning, and not only for this reason.

Among those attending 'God on Mondays' today was the familiar face of a woman I had seen before, and mentioned in a previous posting, standing beneath the underpass by City Hall, quietly simply proclaiming the essential Gospel message to passers by. In recent weeks, she's also come into St John's to pray, after her sessions in the subway. Last Monday she was in school, collecting a grandchild. This week she and the grandchild joined us for 'God on Mondays' It was delightful, seeing her piece together the fact that I was the guy riding through the underpass on the bike who smiled at her; the same who was there in St John's dressed up and going through these rituals that 'Church' people do; The same man behind a guitar in the school with the kids. Small world.

Across all the different 'cultural' paths we devise for ourselves, meetings happen between people who treasure the same essential things in life, things which unite us, no matter how different our origins, our interests, our struggle to make life meaningful. At the end of the day these are meetings that matter, to thank God for at the end of the day.