A Cambridge God Adventure 13) Exhilarating slow down

I had imagined that the best outcome of the Church Meeting would be a resounding 'Yes' to the Coffee Shop plan.  But in the days following I witnessed something far more significant. People were genuinely sharing and listening to each other.  God had slowed us down in order to speed us up in the quality of fellowship, prayer and discernment.  Not for the first time we were learning about God's pace-making and our need to keep in step with him.

Responses to the new committee came from almost everyone (it seemed).  Actually, few ideas were about a new coffee shop.  Far more people focused on the main halls block which is set back from the main road and reached down a path beside the disused graveyard.  Someone suggested that we make one of the rooms in these old halls an attractive coffee bar - weren't there possibilities here to offer Christian friendship with light refreshments?  Others shared grandiose ideas such as completely rebuilding the whole halls block.  The extremes of minimal expense and hundreds of thousands of pounds were on display.

Whatever else many were concerned about 'doing something, anything, about our church kitchen' which existed as a cramped narrow broom cupboard. Equivalent to four adjacent telephone boxes it had enabled every act of hospitality since the opening of the church.....somehow catering for major events.  Someone commented that you could always tell how alive a church community was by the size of its kitchen.  By that criterion we were dead in the water! If we were serious about welcoming friends and strangers then we had to change basic resources in our premises.

The committee convener rightly kept asking us who were the people we were wanting to reach and if God wanted us to offer something to people who passed by the church did we have enough people and commitment to make an immediate start.  How could we best focus our evangelism and service? These key questions dominated our thinking and praying.  We were a much stronger church for the slowing down.