Aug-05 CallED to the small and Simple

We had a zoom for everyone, rather than some meeting in Watts Park and some online.

The headline we feel is that God is calling us into the small - small and simple gatherings and activities rather than big organised things seem to be the direction our fresh start is going.

Our new evening prayer is small and simple. And living together in a household with others to eat together and pray together is also small and simple!

Southampton Prayer Line - SoHOP experimental prayer call

We have decided to start our Prayer Line experiment. We set up a recurring zoom meeting for 9pm each evening. If you want to join us to pray together for the topic of the day from the prayer line you are welcome. 

We noted that:

• it only needs 2 or 3 to gather in Jesus name and pray.

• it will be very simple - pray into the topic of the day

• we will keep to 15 mins

If it works we can invite others to join us after a few weeks. At that time we would need 2 people from SoHOP there each night to host it. We'd make a little rota.

L E A P

One of our community (Jo) has been living in a house as part of a Church of England pioneer project. This is now coming to an end and the people in the house have to move at the end of the year. This made us think about whether God wants to keep the house set aside for prayer.

Listening to Jo talk about it a simple vision emerged: to be in a house together and Live, Eat And Pray together. (L E A P for short...). We would like to sow out the vision for this locally and see if there are others who want to start such a house.

We should provide support in the early stages of people meeting together and working out how they would run their household. Living together in this shared life should be planned well. This planning is like the discernment stage we went through for the house of prayer - meet together and eat together for a few weeks and discuss topics like cooking, cleaning, rhythms of prayer, finances etc.

The leaders met on zoom with Bishop Debbie on 24 July to find out more about what is happening to the house. We shared our initial thoughts about what God is doing calling people to live in a house together to be a community that prays. Bishop Debbie was positive about the idea, but practically she has no say in what happens to Jo's house. It's all with the people who handle property and they will sell or rent it as they see fit. 

This episode has focussed our thoughts on prayer communities (sometimes termed new monasticism). Is this on on God's agenda for Southampton? It is certainly interesting that we met with Bishop Debbie on 24th July - 24/7!!