The theme for the evening was community, and the evening was run to the theme of restaurant.
The team sent out invitations to what appeared to be a dinner party (designed by Kylie Brown):
From 6.30pm - 7pm we all mixed and mingled it up with each other in the foyer while a selection of small nibbles were served. We had about 40-45 people in attendance from the 20-30 year old age group which made for a great vibe.
At 7pm, everyone was moved through to the side hall to find a seat at the tables.
We then kicked the evening off with this video:
After the video finished we kicked into the starters, which involved a group exercise where each member had 2 minutes to share a nutshell version of their life story.
After many meetings, many discussions and plenty of planning we finally put our words into action on March the 5th, 2010.
Tucked away in the side hall of Hillsborough Baptist, about 35-40 of us gathered together and waited to see how the evening would unfold.
After mixing and mingling for the better part of 30 minutes we kicked off with this video:
Al Coats then opened the night with a small introduction on what it is these "Friday Nights" are all about. Here is a video with some sections of what he had to share:
In summary:
We all have to choose how we live our lives
We all have to answer for the choices we make
There are a lot of us who are unsatisfied with the way we do life, with the way we do church.
We’ve decided that we’re going to try and get to the bottom of why we are feeling like this.
We need to approach this with an open mind. We can’t move forward if we approach this with a closed mind.
We need to avoid skepticism, negativity and destructive criticism.
Let’s approach this with a fresh and engaged mind.
This is just the beginning! There are no rules, structures, agendas with these Friday nights.
We need your input and feedback and questions to shape what we it is we do.
We’re all in this together, this group has to be collaborative. Not just another ‘speaker at the front, sit and listen’ type event.
After Al Coats had spoken Matt Browning took us through a group exercise.
Each of us a given a pad of post-it notes and asked to share our thoughts, questions, frustrations on four different areas-
- Church Stuff: - Extending Community - Personal Faith - Misc
All in all we got through over 200 post-it notes with some strong themes and trends coming through in the thoughts being expressed.
