Saturday, March 08, 2008

MSM Training Day 02

We’ve had the session I’ve looked to most during the weekend on discipleship. It was broken up in three parts, the first aspect looking at the importance of discipleship, the second looking at the vision and values of discipleship and ending with ways and means to apply it in Fresh Expressions. It was a really useful session that underlined just how crucial discipleship is the whole enterprise to the point of stating that everything rises and falls on how effectively we make disciples. What was particularly helpful in the process was application points between the three parts that gave a chance to look at how we could apply what was being learnt to our own situations. In my small group we were focussing on another location and the potential of what could happen there, but as we were talking my mind was focussed on application points for the YMCA mission.

The session after this was on Worship and Sacraments as led by the Bishop of Stafford who did a brilliant job exploring Key Ingredients in Christian Worship from Exodus: Worship on the Journey. This looked at the church as a movement as opposed to an institution with a cursory overview of the example of the people of Israel’s experience in Exodus. Concepts included worship that people can take with them on their journey seeing Exodus as an invitation to move from brutal power to the living God – contrast from fear to compassion. The ingredients themselves were Praise, Lament, Adoration, Intercession and Prayer On A Journey.

The Small Groups session looked at advice for starting small groups, comparing Base Ecclesial Communities and Cell Church. This reaffirmed how for the small group to work it’s got to cover four parts – Up (Worship), Out (Mission), Of (Connection) and In (Community) this particularly looks at the need to cover the mission element of their work. We then had an exercise of cell group in action which was hugely helpful and again giving ideas for the workplace.

The final session of the day was on the cheerful subject of opposition and failure which was alright and gave time for people to pray and on issues, which was hugely helpful to me. Last day tomorrow and it has already been a great weekend for ministry and appreciating other people and their plight.

For His Name’s Sake
Shalom
da man cd

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