Mini-Glasgow

Want to know what Glasgow looks like?Have a look here miniatureglasgow.com

You will see all the stats and figure reduced down to a population of 100 it makes for worrying reading.
20 adults would be unemployed or to ill to work 25 are income deprived and 15 don't have bank accounts just some of the stats!!!

One another

I have had a bit of time over the last few weeks to be with my family which has been great and very relaxing(most of the time).This has made me think even more about the shape of our community.
Over the last few weeks Carol has shared on a Sunday morning .She is very creative and likes to be interactive which is important for us.Some people still find it difficult to be interactive in church because of there expectation to be preached at.But I think we have slowly but surely helped people get there head and hearts around this way of being church.
I believe the next part of our challenge is the way in which we worship(defined as a singing slot)this should in theory be the easiest part of our time together .But for some reason we have closed up on the idea of sharing our worship depending to much on the song.It may come down to trying to focus on making the other part of our time more inclusive that we have reverted back to what we know with the song singing.
All of this tells me that even with a group of folk like ours it can be a real challenge to bring about the changes that will allow us to have more of a "one another"time .It is my challenge to decrease and allow others to grow .

Emerging Scotland

At last someone has got it together enough to give us Scots a place to talk all things emerging.Please sign up and give us your thoughts .

http://emergingscotland.ning.com/

No place like home


Dorothy had one amazing journey in order to learn that theres "no place like home".Over these last few weeks I have had the same "no place like home "moments.Our little community has been through the wars over the last few years and at times I thought we would go under.But somehow the great OZ has kept us together and enabled us to see clearly that there really is no place like home.
Being in fellowship with and amazing group of people cannot be beaten.Knowing that there hearts are for you and that there deeds will back that up brings a joy that cannot be spoken.So I want to say a big thanks to my wife Lesley to John the plumber to Anne and Carol to my mother and to all those who have re-appeared over the last few months To Gordy for opening his heart and sharing again the story of seeing us like David killing the giant with the simple things like a few stones to big John for being willing to confess and move on.
The only problem with all of this is that I want home to get bigger and bigger so there is room for more.A place for all those misfits like scarecrows and cowardly lions and rusting men wow.

open door update

The project has really started to take some shape now.A few weeks ago we met to try to help our worker (Anne) have a bit more direction.She told us that things were going well and that as a project we were starting to get some referral's from other projects in the east end of Glasgow.

After talking and sharing and some good questions we were able to begin to see a shape forming.We have always wanted to be involved with young people and there families.So we are now able to think more clearly about what it is we can offer them.As well as the current group work with young people Anne and Carol will start a Seasons for Growth group next week with some of the young people that have been referred to us .http://www.seasonsforgrowth.co.uk/

We will also look to get some training with Seasons for Growth for the adult classes.This will hopefully happen over the next few months.

We have also started to get some more volunteers to help out throughout the working week.It will take some time to train them and find what skills they have but this means Anne will have some other people around the place during the working day.

As a side to this we have seen a few workers from other projects that Anne has known start to come about the church itself.This is indeed a busy time for us all but a very exciting time as we can now start to see the possibilities for the Open Door project.

In order to get things up and running I will start to publish these post on the Open Door blog as well as here .The ling can be found on the link bar at the top of this blog.
http://opendoorbridgeton.blogspot.com/

Scottish Network Churches Conference

This years Scottish Network Churches Conference will take place on the 27th & 28th of March in Bishopobriggs community church.This years main speaker will be Wes Sutton .Wes is a worship leader as well as leading Church.co.uk which is part of Steve Chalkes Oasis more info here http://www.oasisuk.org/article.aspx?menuid=10450

As well as Wes there will also be input from some of the Network leaders.You can get info from the Network office network@bishopcc.org.uk