NEO Retreat November 11, 2007

Hmm, I’m not really sure how to summarise this week! So, we’ll start with location: I was in Liverpool from Wednesday evening to Friday morning… and then purpose: I was there for a 24 retreat with the leaders of SA church plants (NEOs)  from accross the country.

 This is, however, by no means a good summary. I wish I could have somehow blogged directly from my thoughts, as so much went on over those 24 hours. I felt inspired and yet unsettled, blessed and yet dissatisfied, shocked and yet thrilled, uncertain and yet expectant.

We chatted about the partnership between prayer and mission. We chatted about new ways to focus on both. We shared our stories and our hopes and fears. We talked about some big ideas to make a difference. In those 24 hours I felt excited about what it means to be part of the Kingdom of God, and like we, with some small decisions and changes in our behaviour, could make a difference.

 We had late night discussions… with topics that ranged from the intense -for example the rarity of miracles, to the inane – for example the things we collected as children.

 There were a number of times over the 24 hours when I felt myself choking up. For so long I have been desperate to see God reawakening a passion in us, to be who we were raised up to be. In the last couple of years I have seen glimpses of that stirring. In Liverpool I felt like I was immersed in it. There was an atmosphere of ‘anything is possible here… let’s dream big and see what God can do.’   

I had some individual conversations that were great too… we chatted about how to raise the profile of prayer, how to equip teams to pray, and lots of other stuff. We discussed and prayed about the dreams that get each one of us up in the morning, and conversely the things that tempt us to stay hiding under the duvet. We prayed for each other too, and this was done from a place of honesty and vulnerability. It was a precious time.

I sometimes struggle with conferences. Sometimes it feels like theory and theory and theory, and I find my mind wandering… I want to be out of there and trying things out, it feels like my mind is going to explode with all the ‘good ideas’. Liverpool was different though, because we weren’t just banding around nice theories, you could hear and sense the passion in the things people shared, and I am so excited to see how those things play out.

On Friday evening, at our leaders cell here in Wandsworth, we had to identify and describe to the group a time when we felt motivated by something. The rest of the group had to then identify what were the primary motivators for each of us. Mine came out as being given the space to think creatively and differently, being released to think outside the box, being given a blank canvas. I think, for me, Liverpool proved that to be true.

I’ve been thinking lots since getting home. I do end up visiting lots of places, and about a year ago I decided that instead of simply filling pages and pages with notes and then just shelving them, that I would endeavour to put things I learn from these places into practice. That I would seek not simply to enjoy all the trekking around, but to use each trip as a learning experience, and to see it as a gift God has given me, a gift that needs to be unwrapped and used.

Being in a context like the NEO retreat is unsettling for me, because I miss living in a church plant context. I miss the blank canvas that this provides. There is the temptation to struggle being back home and being back in my normal routine. I have been amazed since coming back though, because the gift of the retreat, for me, has been identifying a number of practical ways to put some of my dreams into practice here and now. Watch this space!