Week 8 - finding my way through the labyrinth

I keep reflecting upon how The Station fits in with the notion of emerging church. Could this be church in its own right? I think that potentially it could, but we are a long way away from this. There is no reason why the people who come to the Quench cafe couldn't experience it as their church. Someone described the cafe as being a community cafe with Christianity on the edges, I like this. 

I did three prayer stations on Thursday - the first was simply a pot of bubbles and people had to think about something they wished they hadn't done or were worried about. Blowing the bubbles was a symbol of the freedom that God brings and that he is a God of forgiveness.

The second was a large piece of paper and on the top it said 'If God was here today what would you ask him'? The third was a finger labyrinth and as people slowly traced the path to the centre, I they were asked to think of a person or situation.

Response was generally quite low on the whole, but a few interesting things happened. I  asked two women to go and take a look at The Station who hadn't been in there before as far as I knew. Later I talked to them both and one commented on the fact that she already knew and understood what was being asked of her and that she prayed every day. The other said that she wasn't religious and that they didn't do anything for her. Later on, a child came to have a look at the stations with her family. She started to colour in the finger labyrinth but when I talked to her about what she had to do she was really interested and started to trace the labyrinth with her finger.

The first woman couldn't see any advantage to spending time with God because she said that she already did this and wasn't open to exploring this further, the second was closed for different reasons and the little girl was completely open to doing the activity even though (possibly) she didn't fully understand what she was doing.

As Andy Freeman in Punk Monk says, 'sometimes we can't fix the problem, but our prayers can move mountains. Our actions must be accompanied by passionate and persistent prayer.' I need to keep praying and asking God to show me the best way of making connections with the people in the Quench cafe so that they can feel safe but can also connect with God.