Yesterday I Felt Old
So here we are back in the northeast of Scotland for a few days, while we visit Gill's sister-in-law who recently had surgery for colon cancer and I conduct a wedding for a not-so-young guy who was a part of the youth group when I pastored over here, what seems like a lifetime ago.
Yesterday we decided to visit a new church that had been planted here around two years ago and see how they are doing. I love church planters - we're our own brand of weird, having turned our backs on what is safe and predictable in favor of venturing forward into the unknown.
You wouldn't believe where this church is. First of all you have to realize we are talking about rural Scotland, where there are far more sheep than there are people and there are thousands of acres of fields with the occasional small community. We had lived in one of these villages, with a grand total of 1500 people living there, for fifteen years - you can imagine that the move to Long Island involved substantial culture shock! This new church rents an old Church of Scotland building several miles away from any of these small villages. It's in the country, in the middle of nowhere.
Yet when we got there yesterday, there were about 80 people there and the place was buzzing with life. I think a lot of the activity has to do with the amount of caffeine they take in. They have coffee before service, after service and they even had a ten minute coffee break in the middle of the service. That's enough to make the mildest mannered among us hyper by the time they go home.
And here's what really struck me - everyone there was so young. There were two couples older than Gill and I, but most of the crowd were teens and twenties.
None of the books I have read on church planting suggests that if you start up in the middle of a field in the back end of beyond, you will draw a crowd of young people. I guess God overloooked the bit about location, location, location.
He does what he wants when he wants and with whoever he wants. Thankfully that includes in a movie theater in Patchogue too.
Yesterday we decided to visit a new church that had been planted here around two years ago and see how they are doing. I love church planters - we're our own brand of weird, having turned our backs on what is safe and predictable in favor of venturing forward into the unknown.
You wouldn't believe where this church is. First of all you have to realize we are talking about rural Scotland, where there are far more sheep than there are people and there are thousands of acres of fields with the occasional small community. We had lived in one of these villages, with a grand total of 1500 people living there, for fifteen years - you can imagine that the move to Long Island involved substantial culture shock! This new church rents an old Church of Scotland building several miles away from any of these small villages. It's in the country, in the middle of nowhere.
Yet when we got there yesterday, there were about 80 people there and the place was buzzing with life. I think a lot of the activity has to do with the amount of caffeine they take in. They have coffee before service, after service and they even had a ten minute coffee break in the middle of the service. That's enough to make the mildest mannered among us hyper by the time they go home.
And here's what really struck me - everyone there was so young. There were two couples older than Gill and I, but most of the crowd were teens and twenties.
None of the books I have read on church planting suggests that if you start up in the middle of a field in the back end of beyond, you will draw a crowd of young people. I guess God overloooked the bit about location, location, location.
He does what he wants when he wants and with whoever he wants. Thankfully that includes in a movie theater in Patchogue too.
posted by Roger Blackmore | 5:59 AM
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