Another Love Feast! Last night about 260 of us or so trekked over to Camden in celebration of what God has been doing and looking to what’s next. It was a little different than love feasts past (although, aren’t they all unique as our traditions continue to develop?). One thing that was the same, there was a lot of love going around…a lot of making whoopee (Dr. John’s version here) in the holiest of ways.
A few reflections of really great moments from last night…wanna share some of yours?
1. We met in Camden! Our congregation exists (officially open)! It was awesome to have Jenny Laxton & the team leading us to worship. We were in a flow for a while needing to meet at BW for almost a year-and the past 2 have been somewhere else. Will we even fit at 1125 this April? Whoopie!
2. Circles of 10. I think a lot of people had the sensation “I don’t know most of these people!”. If it makes you feel any better, I didn’t know a lot of people, too. Getting in those circles of 10 helped some people make new connections-but I loved hearing from friends who were having a pretty cool moment of “I’ve been part of the community longer than anyone else in my group! I didn’t realize how much of a bridge-builder I need to be!” Whoopie.
3. Bryan Robinson, pastor. I am grateful for his return to a fuller pastoral capacity. Whoop-whoopie!!
4. The covenant. Rod laid it out well… “how do we keep this group [and more] together? This covenant of love.” We had to make some changes to the process for how people join our covenant. It required maybe some more processing beforehand. There were more than 30 people who wanted to do it. The recommender didn’t get to make a speech this time, just the person wanting to make the covenant. Maybe next time we’ll have the person recommended only say a sentance and let the recommender talk more. Maybe we’ll need to do the process locally and just show pictures of the people in a video because we don’t have 5hrs to hear everyone’s story. A big whoopie!
5. Whoopie pies. God bless whoever brought those! They even work so good with my little theme, here!
I’m grateful that we survived another 4months as a circle of hope. We try to do a lot of things that are really hard. We try to follow the Spirit, and it leads us close to and through danger. I am excited to see where God takes us this next quarter!
PS-The batteries for my camera were dead yesterday and I didn’t get new ones. Did anybody get some shots from the feast or the baptisms that they would post on the Flickr group?
Tags: camden, dr. john, love feast, makin whoopie, philadelphia, urban promise, whoopee pies
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The whoopie pies were courtesy of my housemate, Laura. She is shocked when people know what they are! You made her day — whoopee, indeed!
I really enjoyed the covenanting process. It made it much more about the person making the leap than the person making the recommendation. Thats tough for some folks though. Its going to require a lot of trust, network wide, to be able to bring people into us that way. I think what goes unsaid a lot is that our meetings (the Love feast included) are much bigger than what happens at them in those few hours…..and so is our life together. The folks that want to make a covenant have already gone through (likely) hours of processing with another covenant member to understand what it is theyre saying yes to. I can go with that new process, especially when we (the collective known as Circle Hope) say ‘yes’ back to enough people in one night to effectively add 10% to our little outpost in the wilderness. Its amazing to think what we;re going to have to do to keep catching up with what God is already doing among us.
this post got so much awesomer after i read it while listening to the youtube clip
So good to hear stories from home. This blogging thing makes a lot more sense when you’re away from the ones you love.