Busy sunday

Sunday was a fairly busy day, rushing around to set up church was pretty exhausting as there was only me and andrew around and it was communion. Setting out tables, sound equipment, making tea, practicing songs, fetching people, setting out communion elements, and then after the service putting everything back and moving sound equip to the car to take for the awe service in the evening. The service was interesting as we discussed the story of the 'rich young' man, the way that someone who supposes they have god all understood and then to be challenged in such a way that you realise that you haven't fully grasped god at all. Even the disciples must've been challenged at jesus' response to sell all your things and follow him. Not least cos this was a sacrifice that they had already made, but because to them 'wealth' was a sign of god's favour on someone. Again the 'upside down' nature of god's kingdom is revealed. There followed input from the minister about freudian ideas on personality and what gives us our 'moral' understanding, it was all really interesting. After lunch I spent a few hours trying to tidy my office, it's a tip, and a good few more hours are required to get things back in order. Set up for the alternative service went smoothly and was again an opportunity to enjoy each other's company as we played with gadgets! The subject was 'what is it to be human', which the speaker had wanted to expound in a sense to break the traditional 'what is it to be a christian'. We tried a new worship trick which seemed to work quite well. People were encouraged to write something good about being human on a piece of card and then be photographed holding it. These images were then later collated into a visual powerpoint meditation after some thoughts from the speaker about what was bad about being human. i thought it worked really well. The talk was particularly challenging with regard to the term 'inhumanity' and the labelling thus of someone as sub human and what that means, iving examples and readings from eye witness accounts of lynch mobs. What do we see when we look in a mirror, what if we reflected the nature of all humanity, what would that represent? Does the nature of god who became human shine through.