Church Without Walls connects with "The Homecoming"
Check the picture out. Thought it was cool the way the light has reflected off the poster. Pray for the light of the world to touch Scotland.
Please get your friends in the various congregations around Scotland to book up for the 4th Re-Energise Conference coming up this 11-13 January in Aviemore. This conference has the potential to inspire something really good to rollout across Scotland during 2009/10. I'm praying that we get 300 congregations. ( to start with), from the Church of Scotland registered for this event. This event has the opportunity to take the thinking of the National Gathering and help congregations find a vision and partnerships to help them in their mission strategy for the next few years.
The Scottish Government has been planning the Year of Homecoming since 2006. It is an attempt to persuade the Scottish diaspora to return and celebrate their family roots. Its interesting to note that while doing the research for this initiative, one of the major causes of tourism was discovered to be connected with spirituality. Literally hundreds of thousands of people transverse the globe in search of a spiritual encounter. It became obvious that the churches should become involved because of the rich Christian heritage of Scotland.
At Aviemore we want to explore how congregations can use their spiritual creativity to help connect present day Scotland with its rich Christian heritage. As I have said in previous postings the present credit crunch will have a serious effect on the Governments Tourist plans, however churches could quite easily prepare to host many o heir overseas partners to come to Scotland during 2009/10. many of these partners might well be the agents of change we need to encounter to help us change he way we do church here in Scotland.
So how about signing up for Aviemore and partner with a group of churches that want to celebrate Homecoming. We can do this by inviting the nation of Scotland to consider a different kind of Homecoming one that makes space for people to interact with God rather than simply a church building. I don't mean that the church buildings can't help us to do such a thing. However we need to be careful that our church buildings are not simply turned into heritage trail stations rather than centres of worship.
I'm looking to explore with those who attend Aviemore all kinds of ways we can engage with the theme "Homecoming" in order to help us as churches make our witness meaningful to the population we serve. So go now to the www.cwwresources.org.uk and sign up for the conference.
