Adaptable meeting guide: Reimagining Church 2: What could we do?

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THIS WEEK’S PASSAGES: LUKE 8:16-17, MATTHEW 18:18-20

 

PREPARATION

You will need: the ‘Church from scratch – don’t start with church’ video (easily found on YouTube); some photos of local places your young people will recognise eg a local park, coffee shop, beach, school playground, skate park; blank stickers; Lego or Duplo bricks; a candle and a way to play ‘Build your Kingdom here’ by Rend Collective.

 

THE WALL

10 mins 

Watch the ‘Church from scratch’ video. Ask the young people how the video made them feel. Did they identify with any of the people? Did they see any similarities with the way they struggle to explain church to their friends?

Gently move the conversation on to thinking about your own church again, drawing on some of the challenges we explored in the previous session. Where does the group think the walls are between your church and the wider community? What about younger people, and their friends in particular?

Explain that over the next few weeks you’ll be exploring together how you might travel beyond the wall together, and reimagine Church for the people you know who might not connect with things now.

 

LOOKING AROUND US

10 mins 

Pass around the pictures of local and familiar places. Ask the young people if they have any particular memories from here, any stories that spring to mind.

• Are these places where we can experience community?

• Could we feel connectedness to people, or things, or God?

• Are there mission opportunities here?

• How could we worship in these places?

You might need to challenge the young people to think outside the box. Remind them that if we do exactly the same things that our church does, but in a different place, we aren’t really doing church differently. What new imaginative ways can they think of to do church differently?

 

DON’T LOOK AWAY

15 mins 

If we’re being honest, most of us like the safety that the walls bring. This is why lots of people like the church building - it’s a safe place where we can worship and sing and take part in communion.

It is easy to be a Christian when we are surrounded by Christians, but sometimes we can exclude people without realising it and sometimes we need to reimagine Church so we can meet people where they’re at.

Give out the toy bricks. Have the young people label each brick with a reason for building a wall. For example: ‘praying in public is hard’, ‘people won’t understand what church means to us’, ‘how do I worship in public without feeling self-conscious?’ ‘What if people laugh at us?’

Read Luke 8:16-17 together. As this is happening, light a candle and put it behind the wall of bricks. The light that Jesus is telling us about is his light, the good news. Why do we hide it behind the wall?

Sometimes we feel self-conscious about our traditional ways of doing church. People from unchurched backgrounds might think a lot of these things are weird, but Jesus calls us to share our faith. Everyone is different, and we can develop new forms of church that fit in the places we see in the pictures. It doesn’t have to be singing hymns or reciting liturgy: what could we do that is different?

 

BUILDING SOMETHING NEW

10 mins 

Have each of the young people take back their bricks, and remove their self-conscious labels. Have them write new labels about how and why we should reimagine Church for those who aren’t already part of it: ‘not everyone likes singing,’ ‘it is easy to meet people outside,’ ‘we don’t have to meet on a Sunday morning.’

Ask the young people to use their bricks to build a stand for the candle to shine brightly from. As they do this, play ‘Build your Kingdom Here’ by Rend Collective during this reflective time.

 

WHAT COULD WE DO?

10 mins 

Invite the young people to think about some of the things you could do as a group to reimagine church for their friends and the people they know. Begin to dream together and imagine some of the different possibilities.

You might need to guide the young people, encouraging them to think ‘out of the box’ – meeting at a different time or place, or doing Bible study, worship and prayer in different ways. On the other hand, they may be incredibly ambitious, in which case you might need to sensitively guide them towards simpler ideas that are more achievable. Be careful not to dampen their enthusiasm by being too negative and shutting down the discussion. Make sure you make a note of these ideas for the next session.

 

ARE YOU STILL FEELING SELF-CONSCIOUS?

10 mins 

Read Matthew 18:18-20. Together we can rest in the assurance that God will be with us wherever we meet. It doesn’t have to be in a traditional church building: ‘For where two or three gather together as my followers, I am there among them.’ How powerful is that? Close by praying: Father God, we thank you that you are the light that shines in the darkness. Help us to step out beyond the walls of traditional church and beyond our own self-consciousness, and take your light into the world. We thank you that you will be with us whenever we meet in your name. Amen.