notes from May 12th

Hey, folks, before it gets too much later, here is a brief synopsis from this last Saturday's meeting.

Firstly, in hopes to dislodge out core group meeting from the high-traffic Saturday, we will be meeting, at least for this week, Wednesday night (May 16th), my house, 7:30-9pm.

given that our group was small this last saturday (due to impending graduations, various end-of-term-busy-ness and whatnot :)), we know that this time might not work for everyone, but then, last saturday didn't either. :P So, let's give it a whirl, and at the very least GET ME YOUR SCHEDULES, please. :)

things we talked about:
the Travelling bug:
3 dates in June you should reserve and prepare for:
June 9-11, we will probably go visit a church. we were talking about Mars Hill in Michigan and another one in Indiana?; The Well, in PA; one in DC. those are all churches we might visit, but which one(s) that weekend, we are still looking into.
June 22-24, we are planning ot go away as a group on a team-building retreat
June 28, 29 there is conference in DC, called the Buzz Conference. PR is looking into discounts for us (for the record, PR is a great negotiator. Beware the man in a game of Monopoly). He went last year, i believe, and found it really useful.

Essentially, in our not-in-depth-yet research, we haven't really found another church in the US that is doing what we want to be doing. (Eunice has taken that as a challenge to do some research, i believe. Yay!) If they are out there, then they aren't "big" enough for us to know them or they haven't gotten the exposure that would let us know about them. That means that until we find them, we are essentially pioneering new ground, in terms of how and what we are doing. That can be exciting, and that can be daunting.

however, we still want to go a see how other churches are "doing church": how they operate, how they think, how they plan, how they respond to what God is doing in their midst. One thing we need to remember, when we visit, is that what we see on a visit is most likely their (quasi-)finished product, and doesn't necessarily reflect what they started with, or the journey they took to get there. this serves as both an encouragement and a sober reminder to us as we pray and plan: that we don't have to have it all figured out before we start, but also that we shouldn't hold on to our original ideas/plans/agendas so tightly that God can't do what he wants to do with us. :)

This was a lot of our discussion, as well as rather nebulous talk about "what does it mean to be a creative church?" and by nebulous, i don't mean to imply that it was too vague to be important, but rather i mean that it simply hasn't taken much shape yet, and will be expanded upon as we continue.

See y'all Wednesday!