Regional Rural Discussion

At the follow-up meeting to a September meeting of Kerwood-Cairngorm, Melbourne-North Ekfrid, Wardsville-Cairo and Glencoe-Appin pastoral charges, we reviewed some of the discussion and ideas presented earlier.

Some new suggestions were made: a regional Habitat for Humanity project; a pre-long weekend service or a Christmas Eve Eve worship; regional support for "The Swell"; region-wide interest/social groups (i.e., hobbies, sports and crafting groups); or a regional AOTS/Men's group. We assessed which of the ideas were regional, which were for pastoral charges or individual churches and which were beyond our scope.

While there were many good suggestions made, I shared a concern that few of them attempted to reach out to those unconnected with our churches. It seemed we were coming up with different ways of doing the same thing for the same people - "preaching to the choir" as it were.

Ultimately, it was decided that we'd look into a shared advertising "campaign" using the Emerging Spirit material and investigate a regional worship band.

An invitation was extended to join a "(Potluck) Meal & Movie Night" at Melbourne United on Jan. 11 with another regional rural meeting on Jan. 16. The regional rural worship in March will be at Wardsville United and at Melbourne United in June.