[34] Assembling the jigsaw

It's fair to say that we were still buzzing from the retreat day we had last Saturday. Tonight we took stock of where it has left us, and how we are going to prepare for the first term of the House of Prayer, starting on Friday 4 January 2019.

Share and Prayer about the retreat day

In pairs we shared what’s been sitting with us most since the retreat day, and prayed about it together. Then each pair told the whole group what they'd been praying about. It was good to hear the range of feedback from the day and remember the highlights.

In conclusion we remembered the picture Jim shared of a vine with a new shoot - God will train us as we grow, keeping our 'branch' in the right place to bear much fruit!!

Jigsaw

The metaphor to help us understand how to proceed from now to launch is that of a jigsaw. We've had this picture given at least twice recently. This is the season to assemble the pieces God has put in our hands. 

It also seems that Father is having fun with us on this. Discovering hidden treasures and collecting clues about the venue are His way of doing it because He enjoys our seeking him and engaging Him to work it out. 

One very clear result of the retreat day is that we have a widening out of our awareness of all that needs to be done. We have a roll of wallpaper with all the things we thought of that are going to have to be in place for us to be open for prayer on 4th January. These are like pieces of the puzzle. Which ones to assemble first?

Tonight the leaders and a couple of others with skills in planning went off with this roll of wallpaper to begin to plan how to fit all these pieces together. Part of the intention here is to identify jigsaw pieces so that we can share them out…

Declarations

On the retreat day we had a quick taster session from Lena on using declaration in our prayer. Tonight we revisited this to make some declarations for us as a discernment community to pray over the next two months as we approach going live. These will be a resource for us in our individual prayers and also in the growing number of prayer gatherings that are happening during the week.

We also spent some time praying for a member of our group who is taking a step back for a while due to pressure of other commitments. We wrote some encouragements and messages down and one of the group will go and visit and pass it all on.

Priority pieces of the puzzle

The planning group identified that church engagement is a high priority for us right now. Now that we know the outline for what we will begin in January we can go back to our wider community and let them know. We can also reach out again to the church across the city and invite them to join in. 

Therefore we made a simple plan of how to spread the word about the House of Prayer. This includes things like outline of the vision, a flyer, online presence, email and phone line for inquiries. Seeing the project management skills of Tracey, we asked her to capture some of the details and create a spreadsheet to show all the things we have to do and therefore help to share them out.

We are going to invite the wider community to meet up again in November. It is time to share the vision and explain how people can get involved.