Vision overflow…

At the end of December Timo, our youth pastor, gave a group of us homework. He regretted it last night.

The homework was to think and pray about our vision for the next two years, and come back to him with a picture of how we felt the youth work should look by then.

Giving me this homework assignment is rather like giving a surfer a ticket to Hawaii with strict instructions not to forget their board. On average I have about fifteen ‘great ideas’ a day: every now and again one of them actually works. Here I was being give the chance to inflict them on other people.

I did try to keep it short, honest, but Timo still had to stop me after ten minutes (to the relief of those present I suspect). My excuse is that I had to translate as I read my notes, so it took longer. Honest.

What was exciting is the extent that the different ideas we had fitted together. A strong theme was more community, more discipleship, and small groups becoming more important. I expect, and hope, that we’ll see an ever-greater emphasis on small groups in the youth, and less on programmes.

The ideas I’ve been waffling about on this blog for some time of widening worship, and having more ‘alternative’ worship styles fit in with what the leader of the band is hoping to do, and it seems we can work much more closely so that the distinction between musical worship and ‘alternative worship’ is blurred and people can bring their gifts to God rather than leaving it all to the ‘gifted’ people up at the front.

Xpresso is in a great position to do this, and I’m hoping that we can have an alternative worship service at least once in this year. We’re already working on a drum circle, and I’ve heard rumours of people wanting to dance at some point.

Hopefully this will gradually become part of the culture here so that when other people come with ideas, we’re ready to work with them. There are also people wanting to bring some organisation into all of this. Fantastic- I don’t have to do it…

Now we have to get some concrete goals towards all these visions, so we’ve all been given more homework: working out more solid goals towards making all this happen with feedback ‘soon’.

I promise I’ll try to talk for less than 10 minutes this time.