Welcome!
Thanks for the meetup tonight, everyone - I really enjoyed it as well as meeting all of you! Thanks also to Pierre for hosting us at Third Place.
For those who weren't there - here's what happened. We each introduced ourselves and told our own stories briefly (had to be - there were 18 of us!) and said what we'd expect out of a group like this. Some of the things were:
- great sounding board
- connect with new people
- searching for a space for questions; meeting people in the flesh
- searching for a community
- creating, rather than just talking
- finding others
- space for questions
- want to know more about the emerging church conversation
- curious about new forms of Christian community
- networking with people
- "What's next?"
- allowing culture to shape our expression of Christianity; taking the Gospel *to* the world rather than expecting them to come to us
- some action
- "Someone gave me words for what I was thinking."
- in the past it's been a lot of talk with no action
This website is a good place to keep up-to-date with what's going on in Pretoria - especially with future meetups of the group. You can also join the Facebook group. To join the Pretoria group on this site, simply register (and make sure you join the group on the registration page). You can also create a group post.
Some of the websites that we mentioned tonight were:
http://www.emergingafrica.info/pretoria
reverberate.co.za
3rdplace.co.za
thebreadandwine.net
futurechurch.co.za
nieucommunities.org
mycontemplations.wordpress.com
anderkant.wordpress.com
amahoro-africa.org
ntwrightpage.com
thepaulpage.com
Please leave a comment below if you were there (or if you weren't!) - just to say "hi" :)
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What a breath of fresh air!
Hi Roger and everyone who organised this get-together,
Thank you so much for taking the initiative to arrange an EC event in the flesh. It was such a breath of fresh air for me to finally meet some real flesh-and-blood people who are part of the emerging church conversation.
I made new friends, talked to people who are in the process of starting new fellowships or are planning to do so and people who just generally seem to be on a journey of figuring out how to be church.
The last guy who spoke just before we broke for coffee (can't remember his name) reminded me of something I experienced during my first job as a youth worker in Cape Town, '95 / '96. There I attended a weekly pastors' fraternal which was one of the highlights of my week. It was my minister and me from the dutch reformed church, a few charismatic pastors, a methodist minister, a presbyterian (uniting church) minister and a catholic priest.
It was just so refreshing to share our struggles and joys in a kind of peer group environment where theological and other differences were almost forgotten and our vision for the kingdom of God was what mattered. It was also a place where we prayed for each other and truely carried each others' burdens. This was the only place I have ever witnessed pastors opening up their hearts to one another to such an extent that they sometimes cried.
I am not necessarily suggesting that future Pretoria Emergent Cohort (PEC!) events should be like pastors' fraternals. I am simply saying that it was the authentic relationships among leaders that made me go back to those fraternal meetings. That is why it didn't drain my energy but rather enthused me.
I am looking forward to future events and to going deeper with our sharing of stories, our search for authentic discipleship and for having a few good laughs with some decent coffee! Thanx 4 the gr8 coffee while I'm at it!
Suggestion for the future
A suggestion that was made on the car ride home last night after the gathering:
We should meet at different people's places and see what they are doing as opposed to meeting in one place and 'just talking'. As powerful as sharing ideas and encouraging each other is, I'd also love to see us sharing what we're doing. This doesn't mean that we all have to be in each others' pockets and I'm not keen on necessarily organizing a shared project (although some suggested this) but it would be cool to actually visit each others sites/activities/actions and learn from those experientially. For example, the next get-together could be at Reverb, and the next at Nieu Communities and the next at Bread and Wine etc and at each gathering we could actually experience something of what others are doing...
agree...
I agree with your suggestion Cori.
Thanx to everyone who came! As Brian also mentioned, I kind of suspected we are going to be 5 people:-)
I'm not for shared projects either, since we are all being church somewhere, and don't need another church. But if this can be a place where we energize each other, and cross-polinate (thanx to Pierre who used this term in our planning of last night).
If you wanna make your community a place of get-together for future get-togethers, maybe just leave a comment.
Oh, and Cori didn't put her URL up last night. So I'm gonna do it:-) go read what she is writing: Cori's blog.
Beer/beverage/burger banter
Just wondered if anyone would be interested in a conversation that we began at the Rocket in Rivonia last month. We talk about "What keeps you up at night?" - theology and culture,justice etc...? We meet at 12 midday, but we should really meet at 12 midnight to really get serious about what keeps you up at night ?
This month we will meet at O'Hagans pub in Paulshof. It's off Witkoppen road at the Cambridge Crossing Shopping centre. It's for one and a half hours and you are welcome to join us. We want to set up a conversational podcast if someone has the gismos to do it. My email is petervey@telkomsa.net. let me know if you are interested.
also had some interesting
also had some interesting debriefing conversations at home last night after our get together (a couple of us grabbed coffee at our place). thanks for setting it up, roger & co - hope to see everyone soon!
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