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New Year is the somewhat cliched - but singularly appropriate - time for taking stock.

This New Year, for All Souls, carries with it a 10th birthday (of the church plant - September 2000) perspective that we're aiming to help propel us energetically into the next decade and more...

A recent piece on Seth Godin's blog quoted a friend of his:

I spent the last seven months doing this [job] and I have nothing to show for it. If I had known I would have spent seven months and gotten nothing, you can bet I would have done something a lot more fun.

Godin looks back on the past decade, suggesting that most people missed the opportunities and simply "hunkered down and did their job or did what they were told or did what they thought they were supposed to, and just about everyone got very little as a result."

Given that ten years is beyond most of us to imagine ahead into, he suggests seven instead:

Seven years from now, what will you have to show for what you're doing right now?

If your answer is, "not much," perhaps you should consider a new plan, one that might generate a different answer, or, at the very least, be a more fun way to waste seven years.

...so back to All Souls' 10th birthday year, we're asking that sort of question. There's simply no point 'hunkering down' and just keeping things going. If all we have to show for it in seven (or ten, or fifty) years' time is a church that is still here and keeps on going, then we've missed the point of why we were planted.

If you're someone who pours time and energy into All Souls - what have you got to show for it so far? What have you seen God do here? What do you dream of him doing in the years to come that we could be celebrating in 2017 or 2020?

The end of a wonderful (overused word this time of year, but justified in this case) few days - starting with the Christingle Service on Sunday morning and finishing this morning with our Christmas Day Celebration.

We finished with a bang - party poppers seemed to fit the occasion of celebration, even though the combination of paper streamers and suspended lit candles was perhaps a little on the risky side...

Here's the moment we shouted Merry Christmas!!

 

 

Numbers over the five Christmas services were very encouraging - especially the number of visitors (many who know us through Little Souls in particular). I remember Andrew Watson (then Vicar of St Stephen's, now Bishop of Aston) once saying something like "Bums on seats isn't everything, but every one of those bums is loved by Jesus!"...

In a day when people speak of the death of the church, the fact that attendance topped 750, with perhaps 500 different people (adults and children) seems something to cheer about today... :-)

Hope you enjoyed your present-giving and receiving today... I'll be back on the blog in ernest (finally) in the New Year - have a great few days!