kirbs: 01/01/2006 - 02/01/2006

Good to Go!

It's been a great weekend the culmination of which was being commissioned by St Bs and sent out to plant "The Emmanuel Network Church" (well that's the name this week anyway..). After 8 and a half great years I was asked by a couple of people if I felt sad to be going, but to be honest I feel more excited and ready. Over the next few months our community is looking to establish it's rhythm of meetings and mission. I've really enjoyed my time at St B's, made loads of friends and learnt lots about church and people. We're not going far so I'm sure "I'll be back" so to speak.
The rest of the weekend was fun as well, we got to visit Albert Square (UK sitcom set) last week and we had lunch in the canteen at the table next to Jesus (or at least the actor who played him) in Zeffirelli's film. It made me laugh - easily pleased. Saturday we managed to drag the boys around town, although we live 25 mins from the centre of London by tube we don't go in that often. We had a good time strolling around Covent Garden and then heading over to the Natural History Museum via a restaurant where we could get a two course dinner for £5 each thanks to a newspaper vouchers thing. We chose a restaurant in the right sort of direction for the museum booked a table and arrived at Grieg's of Mayfair. I think we pushed the casual dress code to the limit, I didn't order the £1500 bottle of wine and we enjoyed a great lunch before heading to see T-Rex at the museum. (He is overated). Now onwards to see what the rest of life has in store..

I or E

Ok we've agreed the name it's going to be Emmauel Network Church, now the only problem is do we spell it with an I which would give us INC as an abbreviated version or with an E when it could be ENC or if we included a The at the front could be TENC or TEN-C. I think I'm spending too much time on detail at the moment....

Values and Names

Just working through the core values for our little adventure. So far I've got three key elements:-

To Grow A Worshipping Community – with a commitment to God and each other

To Encourage Discipleship Training – with a commitment to empowering others

To Engage in Mission through Networks – with a commitment to those outside the Church

Now I know they're not that original because I've figured out (and I probably should have got their sooner) that we're just trying to fulfil the Greatest Commandment (to love God with all your heart, soul and mind and to love your neighbour as yourself) and the Great Commission (to go into all the world and make disciples). Sometimes we overcomplicate things...

Now to the name I'd determined by Sunday that we will have a name and it will either be the North London Network Church or Emmanuel Network Church - I'm leaning towards the latter as I really want God to be with us!

Great Weekend

Friday night was my leaving party with the staff at St B's. It feels strange to be going after nearly 9 years of being part of the team. In some ways the parting is going to be a bit drawn out as although we're being sent out to start a Fresh Expression of church on the 29th Jan, I will be involved with some weekday stuff at St B's until the summer. After that we will maintain relational links and do some work together so although we're going it's not a complete departure. Having said that the staff wanted to mark the move and hired a function room at a very classy indian restaurant. It was a fantastic meal, followed by some gift giving as well. They came up trumps with the 30 GB ipod. I've now downloaded all my CD's and 60 photos and have only used about 2 GB, still it's a good excuse to update my music collection!

On Sunday Mike Moynagh from Fresh Expressions spent the morning with our team. It was a really good reminder of the need to not settle into our default Sunday gathering mode and focus on mission. Our intention has always been to develop a dispersed missional community however in reality it's so hard not to fall back to default and end up with a gathered service..so the challenge is for more faith and more thinking outside the box. I love the verse in Mark where the father who needs Jesus to heal his son says "I do believe, but help me not to doubt." You can work out why I like it for yourself!

Could Do Better...

Fortunately one of my new year goals was not to do more blogging or I'd have failed already.

January is proving a really exciting month as our little community prays about the future and waits for God to point us in the right direction. We're being sent out on January 29th and while I will continue to have a link with St.B's, overseeing the students for the remainder of this academic year, it does feel like this is the start of a new work. On Sunday we've got Michael Moynagh from Fresh Expressions coming to spend the morning with us talking about mission which should be good.

The question that I'm getting most used to being asked is "where is this Church going to meet", and I'm loving it because I don't know and it's not my priority. We will meet together somewhere in North London and there are a few potential venues, but I'm really intending that any building we use short or long term will resource the mission of the community not act as a financial drain or focus for our energy.

It's great being able to start something with a completely blank sheet of paper and so we can work out structures and values with real freedom. I'm intending to gather a steering group this month and a friend of mine, John Chapman, pointed to the Benedictine way on major decisions. This involved the leader of the community asking for every member of the groups opinion, paying particular attention to the youngest and newest members. This being the case I've asked everyone for three names (of which only two can be the same sex) and after I've heard everyone I'm going to invite half a dozen people to form a steering group. This won't be a closed group i.e. anyone else can attend our meetings but it should provide a group who are identified by the community and committed to meeting regularly to discuss some of the community issues and decisions that I need some help with.

At the moment I need some help with a name for our venture having discovered that all the good ones appear to have gone, and that there's a London Network Church and another church called The Network Church in St Albans. We appear to be down to North London Network Church or the Network Community Church, any other suggestions are welcome.

If all else fails we could be Dan's suggestion which no one else has taken and is
the full on God's breakfast ministry of the gospel with signs and wonders and smoke and fire in the power of the spirit of the holy promised preordained messiah beloved son of Jehovah the most high with river of grace and peace and mercy and truth church - it is kind of catchy...