The Big Conversation follow up

Some days ago we announced The Big Conversation and were very interested in the outcome of the thoughts brought together by our brethren and sisters.

Held at Dudley College on October 10^th 2015 the Big Conversation was an opportunity for brothers and sisters from UK ecclesias to share their thoughts and feelings about the future of our community in the UK and in particular, our reducing size.

We may not forget

It is not the numbers, but what happens to the lives of the people who are the numbers that indicates success for a church. The early church was made up of house churches with small numbers—but they changed the world by living their faith every day, even in the face of persecution and death! {Is “Bigger Better” in Churches?}

As followers of Christ Jesus we should remember all his teachings and be willing to become workers for God, deciphering ourselves away and us becoming nothing, and Christ everything.

Nine brothers and sisters from Newbury attended the above gathering and the following is a summary of the discussion during the day;

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The day began by unaccompanied singing of ‘Lead me Lord’ by the 400 plus attendees and prayer. The first information session started with Bro Jon Downes (Worcester) giving a fascinating talk on ‘What is happening?’ He gave an overview of the numerical decline of the community in the UK with the mantra;

“It’s not about the numbers, but the numbers tell the story.”

The details will be available in due course but essentially the numerical size of the community in the UK is declining at quite a rapid rate with an aging profile that will make many ecclesias unsustainable quite soon.
It was stated that there are 256 ecclesias in the UK with a total membership of aprox. 8000. In many ecclesias over 25% of members are over 75 years of age and for many small ecclesias the figure is much higher.

It was stated that the ‘idea of no change’ was not an option. Change is happening it’s how the change is managed that is critical for the survival of our community in the UK. Key words were;

‘Glowing, Sowing and Growing’.

Bro Arne Roberts gave the second talk on ‘Why it matters’. Arne looked at Biblical examples of change and response to change. He suggested that the word church suggested several ideas; firstly CH = Christ, secondly UR. i.e. we are the church, the body of Christ and thirdly CH = Christ. Some key phrases were; ‘Unity in Diversity’, ‘Being a member is not being a clone’ and ‘Church is about meeting, not about meetings’. Arne suggested that are we are easily distracted using our energy about peripheral matters whereas the centre of our faith is ‘The Word’ both the Bible and the message it contains about Jesus Christ.

Significant phrases were;

The importance of listening to understand, not listening to interrupt.

A lot of people feel their ecclesial life is ruled more by fear than love. But ‘perfect love drives out fear.’

The rest of the morning and part of the afternoon was arranged into ‘break-out groups’ where a range of topics and many ideas were generated. These will be circulated in the future as the organizing committee is able to collate and report.

The final session on Saturday was to try to pull together some of what had happened during the day.

With c450 people, there, there was no way everyone could have had a conversation with everyone else so the organisers tried to give a flavour of what had been going on across all the groups. They’d done a short video capturing people’s views on what they would like our community to look like in the next 5-10 years. They also brought 9 people up on stage (3 young, 3 middle aged and 3 in the prime of their lives!) and questioned them about what they were taking out of the day and what they’d like to see happen in our community. We also were given ‘mini action plans’ to complete that ask what (if anything) we plan to do to follow up on the day and we were encouraged to complete them. One interesting item was a short presentation by a brother representing a group called ‘Beyond Lecturing’. This is a small group that has been meeting for about a year to plan how we can, as a Christadelphian body, get better at preaching the good news e.g. by having better training for our ‘speakers’.

Overall, it was an interesting day, providing a unique opportunity to discuss future directions and initiatives for our community.

– Colin E. & Miriam

Preceding articles:

The Big Conversation

Evangelisation, local preaching opposite overseas evangelism

The Right One to follow and to worship

Wanting to live in Christ’s city

A participation in the body of Christ

Positive Preaching Day 2015