Cottage update

People have been asking me a bit recently how our little cottage gathering on Sunday afternoons is going. The idea was to have a very low-key kind of church meeting that offers people plenty of time to talk and get to know one another, as well as opportunity to think out aloud and express their thoughts and ideas on issues of spirituality. We wanted the meeting to be welcoming to all kinds of newtown people, and its content and culture to be accessible to locals without a Christian background. We wanted to establish a community that shares food, friendship and faith - and to invite our friends and neighbours to journey with us in working out what it might mean to follow Jesus.

Nine months in, I think its fair to say that we've found some things pretty challenging. We've settled on a basic program:

• We have afternoon tea from about 4.30 - Dan serves up lovely coffee with latte art as good as any barista's!


• around 5-ish we settle into our seats around tables under the big old fig, and get into the more structured part of the meeting. This has three core elements: a sharing time, in which someone talks or responds to interview questions about how God is working in their lives; a bible time, in which someone gives some prepared reflections on a passage and we all discuss related issues and questions; and lastly a time of prayer.


• by then its usually a bit after 6pm, the sun has dipped below the horizon, and we linger in the half-light over a home-cooked dinner together.

Most weeks i think we get close to the kind of vibe we had initially envisaged. It's been hard, though, to do the bible part of the meeting well. Some of us have over-prepared and presented something much too much like a sermon. Others of us have left things so open that the discussion has been too general to be challenging. We've also realised that we've often lacked the basic skills to prepare helpful comments on a theme or bible passage. But at the same time, we've learned a lot as we've had a crack at it.

In terms of community, I think things are going pretty well. The cake pictured was one I baked to share with another cottage member, and a friend of hers who is interested in Australian history. We are getting better at sharing our lives with one another, at making time to hang out other than on Sundays. We're also getting better at sharing our lives with other Newtown locals - by gardening, for example.

How will things turn out? None of us know the answer. We're still trying to work out how to go about things on a Sunday, how to shed as much of our church culture as we can without shedding our identity as Christ-followers. We need love, wisdom and patience as we work through the issues together.