That old building on Buckley Street

I've been having a whinge for a while about feeling like I'm at a bit of a loose end in life.  Today it hit me in a new way.  I won't bother recounting the details of my day as I'd hope you'd all find that rather boring.  However, it will come as no shock to most of you that I ended up at church for no particular reason.

I'd just come from catching up with a guy I know from the church who runs a business in the area.  He was talking to me all about a really creative idea that's on the boil amongst a small group of church members in terms of how they'd like to use a currently unallocated space in the church's half-finished new buildings.  I have to say I liked the underlying ethos behind the idea quite sincerely - and if I saw a proposal on paper that looked like it would work, I daresay I'd even support the idea.

Anyway, reflecting on that discussion later, sitting on the back of an empty pew at Essendon Bapts, I was wondering how it would go over with the whole church.  I couldn't help but picture the place like it is on a Sunday morning - pretty much packed right to the back (hence the new building on the way).  When you think about it like that, when you imagine a handful of faces who have a really good idea (or even a really bad idea) to start up a new program, event, service, or activity, I really just couldn't see the entire building being abuzz with a sense of peace, security and encouragement for this hypothetical new venture.  So what could I see?

I could see pockets of loosely interconnected people that some would call a 'community'.  The difficulty being that if Pocket A wanted to undertake a particular project, Pocket B wouldn't necessarily be thinking in the same direction.  Pocket C might even have another idea altogether.  That situation isn't a bad one in and of itself... in fact, it's quite healthy to see a community full of people ready to get involved with a bunch of innovative ideas.  The difficulty comes when one of the pockets stands up and puts forward an idea that doesn't seem consistent with the status quo.

People like the status quo because if nothing changes, then they know what to expect.  It gives them a sense of security and control over things that will affect them.  So, particularly in an organisation (community) that for the moment doesn't have a collective vision, the key to changing something smoothly becomes a feat of managing, or I daresay even aligning expectations.

For my church community, I think that's something that we need to work on.  "Getting on the same page" with each other, to the extent where that can practically occur, is really the first step for what is at its very core, a community built on individual choices to participate.  So, zooming in a bit, that leaves little old me - with his systems development life cycle at the ready - getting stuck.

You can't easily systematise an entity that is behaving organically.  I'll try to spare you all the waffling from my uni course... but basically I really like the idea of a solid purpose and direction with things.  Partly because it helps them to run efficiently and partly because it actually gives the people involved a reason to get fired up and participate.  I really struggle to be a part of something that just happens "because that's the way we've always done things" and self-perpetuates indefinitely.  It begs the question "Where do I fit here?"... or even "Do I fit here?"... "Why are we here?"... "What's this all about?"

It was as I was picturing the full church building and effectively asking that question - "Why are we all here?" - of every person there that I found the piece of paper.  My fantastic excuse for not turning up on Sunday morning was that I had responsibilities in the evening service and an Old Testament exam the next day.  That's why I didn't know about what had happened.  Here's what I found:



These little strips were given to everyone who walked in last Sunday morning... and swiftly put me back into the place of asking these two critical questions of myself.  I could have a stab at the answers now, I guess... but I think I'll sit on them for a bit longer.

Your comments please, esteemed readers and Travis.