Our Tuesday evening Church Night is follwing the material from #BigRead12. This week – Expectations.

Week 3 already! As usual we’ve linked to some of the resources from the #BigRead12 site.

After coffee and worshipping together, we gathered to listen to Tom Wright introduce us to this week’s theme:

Then we read Mark 7:1-13

Questions

1. What rules do you live by?
2. How can living by rules draw us nearer to God?
3. In what ways is important is it for Christians to be set apart?
4. Which do you prefer: the gospel or grace or the gospel of law, and why?
5. What’s the most important thing in this passage?

We talked about tradition and culture. We mentioned the usefulness of things that unite people – one example being the Christmas family traditions which still meant a lot to children – now in their twenties! We also noted the danger of empty traditions – things being a certain way just because ‘that’s the way you do it’.

Someone mentioned a way of distinguishing between the helpful and unhelpful aspects of tradition:

Tradition is the living faith of the dead – honour it.

Traditionalism is the dead faith of the living – abandon it!

We also went on to talk about the need for rules and order, and tried to indentify rules we might live by. We agreed to go away and work on this, and maybe to share anything we came up with. (Feel free to comment below!)

We were reminded of the need to have boundaries that protect us, and one person passed on some helpful teaching from Joyce Meyer on this.

Finally we listened to Bridgitte Tetteh’s reflection:

After praying together for one another, and for the church community and wider world, we called it a night.