Thursday, January 31, 2008

Ordinary Community Goes on Retreat

This weekend is our annual Ordinary Community winter retreat. Its a cold, dark and gray time of year here in the Nati and we have traditionally gotten away to spend uninterupted time with God and one another. I think this is our 5th one, but can't be sure. Being a network of house churches in the burbs of Cincinnati its critically important for us to carve off intentional time in our schedules for community and worship. Its a time for catching up, time for bonding, time for support, time for encouragement, time for reflection and prayer, time for unbridled worship and time to immerse ourselves in the Holy Scriptures.

We typically have some sort of theme that gives us focus for our sessions and for the stuff the kids do together as well. This year's theme is "Glorious". We will reflect on:
1) The Glory of God - being encompassed in the Glory that is God's alone
2) The glory of 'me' - receiving the gift our belovedness from our Abba
3) The glory of our world - being in mission to our world and the people upon it
- we'll have a bit of a late night worship/prayer/reflection session on Saturday night in which there is little agenda, God can do what He wants (of course that's always true)

I'm blessed that I belong to a tribe of Christ followers that value community time together and carving out space for God to show His Glory. It's time to prepare my heart and mind for something Glorious.

peace to your weekend,

1 comment:

herbalwellspring said...

Thanks for this post, pretty effective piece of writing.