Community...

Following on from some of the comments left on the previous post (thank you they have been very helpful), I realise that my language has probably not helped me ion communicating what we see here, that I realise is something I need to be more careful with.

A community, I will do more reading on community soon (once more urgent study is firstly completed). I'm fascinated by community, how they work, what creates and maintains community, how they change and how they grow. I love the fact that communities can be so diverse. I think what is at the heart of our community is acceptance though. I realise now that some of my original statements may seem to have contradicted themselves, and to some level it is hard to get out of those contradictions. At present our community is a mixture of those who believe, those who are on the fringe and some who have no belief, and may choose to have a faith in something other than God. I do not want to see those people excluded or judged fro their choice, I want them to feel they are always welcome and loved in the group. However I think it is important to be true to ourselves, always being a place to explore faith, to talk about God and for those who feel able to worship God. By always being clear to the young people and adults that it is a place where we will explore God they can make their decision as to whether it is a community they can be involved in.

As for the 'leaders', this is a term which I have used, and yes we do have leaders, which may appear to create some divide and does, however I realise that a group with young people in needs some levels of leadership, at present the leaders do the 'teaching', however I make it clear that we learn alongside the young people, their comments, thoughts, questions are all valued contributions, ones we shouldn't take lightly, ones we may learn from, as Jesus told us to be like little children, we can learn from one another. I would love to see the young people finding their feet in the group and encouraging one another in how they live their lives, their own theology and faith. This is something I look forward to seeing grow.

I look forward to learning how to look at faith from a child's perspective again and sharing their experiences and my own with each other.