a non-meeting meeting thing (2)
by
chalky
how it went...
Well, I stayed up all night (by which I relly do mean all night....) transforming the building, ably assisted by one other! What a star! Reason for the major last-minuteness was my disorganisation, and I knew it would be very like that!!
It went according to plan mostly; people did read in the reading room, everyone got into it downstairs - at one point I left my stove for a couple of seconds (the major mistake was doing the cooking myself - making jackets and chili
for 50-80 people takes more than a minute or two!!) and looked into the hall, and there were people sitting looking at the quilts, kids playing on the kids playing things, people sat round the food tables chatting,
people at each of the 'discussion' points discussing, and people breaking bread (and people sitting at the 'sit here and read this' bits on the way to breaking bread). What was really nice was that it was buzzing, and it was supposed to buzz.
I heard the prayer room was heaving as well, which was good.
The 'worship' space was somewhat taken over by the kids - i'd put lining paper ofver a big section of one of the walls so people who do (or people who don't usually but would like to)could do arty things. This was entirely
taken over by the kids, who opened the curtains and made the place, um, theirs somewhat! From speaking to people it seemed like this didn't detract too much from the two other features of the room; one of them was in one corner, and was four
'drapes' of bubblewrapcoming down, and you had to sit or kneel in front of them and think of things you had to 'confess', basically (not the language i used - i forget how i said it now) and then pop some bubblewrap as you went through
it to symbolise the life going out of your sin (again not the language i used). Behind were some words about god alongside bread and wine (and blackcurrent squash :)).
Then when you left that little space (only room for one person 'inside')
you had to pause and reflect if there were things you needed to change in your day-to-day life as a result of what you'd just said to god. In the middle of the room was a circle of ivy, wood, and assorted foiliage, with a crumpled up white
sheet in the middle - there were 3 ways to 'access' this - to think about suffering (crown of thorns and graveclothes) unity (well, it was a circle) or god's love (never ending and complete, surrounding us, 'pure' as symbolised by
whiteness of aforementioned sheet). And you could step inside for various reasons if you wanted. Instructions taped to floor outside the circle. And then you could also write on the paper behind you what had struck you during your 'meditation'.
Overwhelming positivity has been the reaction, which says a lot about the place the church is already in really.
lessons for next time
1) Prime the church properly. I hadn't been around for weeks on a Sunday morning to feed them with 'it goes on till 4 - don't just turn up at 1030 and go after lunch'. A few people knew, but for some sunday morning was more convenient, and very few arrived
in the afternoon. That meant the afternoon was very quality time indeed, but quiet, which was nice for me 'cos i'd done all the cooking and could just chill out! Need to explain better in the 4ish weeks running up to it that half the church need to plan to arrive at lunchtime and stay.
2)Never, ever cater it myself again (unless I have nothing to do with the planning and building). There are lots of people who can and would, but I didn't feel it was fair to ask when I started thinking about logistics, which quite honestly was
about Thursday!! After a day of 100% masking tape and moving things and writing posters and instructions and room descriptions for the doors and and and and and.... (and the little thing about not having been to bed, at all), the last thing i should have done was catered. In my defence I did know this, but I was ashamed to ask people with 5 minutes notice!
3) Realise that if there's a wall with paint next to it, you may have reflective worshipful painting in mind, but children will go there to portray their dogs and parents. And garden scenes with sun. It was cool that they did, but it wasn't exactly and precisely the atmosphere i had envisioned!!!
4) for some reason people didn't really write a lot and post their thoughts and writings in the spaces provided. I know that people discussed a lot, and I think that next Sunday morning I'll probably find out what they did think and talk about. Was hoping to produce a 'flyer' with selected items that people had written,
thought this would help people to remember what they themselves learned/ got out of the day. But never mind. So that writing stuff down will have to be rethought. Some of it might have been that in the morning/lunchtime the building was so very full that space to collect your thoughts and write was very limited - everyone was
chatting and being sociable! Hurrah. Also, it was all 'new', so probably most people were just too busy reading and working out where to go next to really ponder enough to write it. A few people did.
5)Again I knew this one already, but i didn't have time to involve people properly, so it ended up being a couple of my good mates who are stars (notably matt and deni, and also emma and eryl) (not that you know who they are, but anyway, it was them!!) - and also there were very few people clearing up afterwards.
To give you some idea of the scale of the operation it took 4 of us 2 hours to put the building back together at the end (and that wasn't including washing up, which was magically just done by anyone and everyone as we went along. Not me though! Or hoovering, which the person who cleans the church
heroically offered to do in the morning. That would have added about another 45 minutes).
Also now people know what it is a bit, next time hopefully we'll get people other than the usual suspects or my mates involved in the early planning stages. I think the way to do this is to pass round a bit of paper
during the speaker one sunday (in weeks where we have one, and depending who it is - they'll have to be confident about rustling paper during their teaching!), as it won't be very disruptive but will take ages. Then we'll have a list of jobs (catering, clearing up afterwards, planning, building it on the saturday etc) on it and people can put their name and phone number on that to sign up. Doesn't mean they will be helping out on every one, but we can work out 'teams' from that - say if 20 people would like to be doing planning, then say 6 people would need to do each one, and then we could sus who would work well with who. Etc. I am only planning to be involved in the next one or two, and am definately going to make sure they are both very different from this one so nobody says 'oh, but we always do that', ever. Maybe one will be a day of fasting so nobody has to cook. Ha.
Next time will be February incidentally, I think. I'm thinking 4 per year.
That's the write-up, then. Half recovered on the sleep front! Fully convinced it was worth it.
chalky would welcome your comments or questions on the
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