After they've been welcomed, how do our newcomers get to the point where they feel they belong?
This was unfortunately the weakest of the courses so far. Maybe the fact that I didn't get the pre-reading done has something to do with it. Nevertheless there were some good parts. Discussing the situations that the church might have to deal with was interesting. We had a simple solution to our problem - it was simple because it was never going to have to be implemented. All that was needed was to find a way to support a young family with a very grizzly baby. Easy - surrogate grandparents! The questionnaires made me think too. Just how much pastoral care really is going on in the church, and how do we know if there are people who are not cared for? I also learnt that our Home Group structure may not be all that it should be - and that people found it intimidating - not knowing how join or who to talk to. I had done a feature on Home Groups at one of the services a while ago. It sounds like it bears repeating or improving - perhaps both.
The hardest part of this session though was the DVD (again). The part I'm talking about has two women sitting outside a church discussing groups in the church and how they are joined by newcomers. The expert was the most confusing person I have listened to for a long time. She seemed to be saying: Groups of people form naturally, its the way humans are made. We should go out of our way to welcome people and include them in our groups. There was a question about whether everyone could do this and the response was that people need not go out of their comfort zones - even that they should not. How do you grow if you don't go out of your comfort zone, if you don't experience new things, if you don't ever tackle anything difficult? As you can see I reacted to that, so I lost the next bit - it all got very confusing after that.
No comments:
Post a Comment