A move to interaction.

About a month ago we decided to try something different at our Sunday events. For years we pretty much did the same thing. People would listen to some songs (or sing long) and then would sit and listen to a 40 minute speech. We always assumed that we had something to say so they needed to listen.

In September I read a book by Jim Henderson and Matt Casper called "Jim and Casper go to church", which caused me to rethink a bit what we do on Sundays and how we do it. Casper is an atheist that goes to different churches and writes down what he sees. One of the thing that he thought we should do more in church is listen to people. That got me thinking.

I decided that since we don't have a whole lot of people yet, we might try another way of communicating - discussion. I made up some questions on the topic of the series we were going through and asked people on Sunday to think about the question, discuss it at their table and there share their opinion with the whole group. It went great. People got so engaged. They were talking (in church), laughing and most important - they were thinking.

On Sunday, October 12th, we decided to only do Q and A time. We got people to ask me questions about church or why we do (or don't do) something. It was incredible. People asked questions for two and a half hours. We did not get to answer all of them that night. It was a great lesson for me. I used to be afraid that if people start talking, then we will never get the the subject. It turned out that it wasn't people that would get me off track, but I would do that myself.

So, it was a great change. We've done it for five weeks now and we are going to continue to play with it to see how we can do that better.