Co-ordinating groups
After the cell groups in the first three days of the week, Thursday is a more general planning and training day. Especially this Thursday. First of all in the afternoon we went to visit the couple that are looking after the new Young Adults’ group (about a dozen people from 17 years to late twenties) - they have a son a month older than Daniele, so they had the opportunity to get to know each better as well. After a few more informal and irregular meetings before the summer, the Young Adults’ group has now started regular meetings with a program. So we talked about the transition between that group and the Youth Group (teenagers) that we lead (and especially for the only male in our group, who is two years’ older than the others, and might feel more at ease in the other group), and things that we can do together. We decided to have some sort of social activity for both groups every two months; when we suggested this to the teenagers they were very enthusiastic, as they suffer a bit from little contact with other Christians of around their own age.
Then in the evening there was the first cell group co-ordination meeting of the new year, which we hold every two months and which I lead. They are very important, as the church has reached the stage that no-one knows everything that is going on. Represented at the meeting where the six cell groups, the Youth and Young Adults’ groups, the Ladies’ group, and an evangelistic Bible study we do with university students in English. It went well, although with some many groups by the time that we heard what they are all planning to do this year, it was time to finish and we could not do the other co-ordination I was hoping to do. The biggest “problem” that was raised was that two of the groups have grown past the usual threshold of 12 people, over which the cell group does not work so effectively. So we will need to do some thinking about the future of those two groups. Especially the one in the Valsugana, as we need to think about the best way to deal with this growth to reach our aim of an autonomous church there.
Friday night was then the usual band practice, and Saturday the meeting with the teenagers at our house where Pinuccia led the study that she had been busy preparing most of the week (as well as a visit for lunch of some of Pinuccia’s relatives). Sunday morning was of course spent in church (with my turn to lead the service), and after another visit from a friend in the afternoon we had some quality time together in the evening. We even managed to get the children to bed a bit earlier so as to have more time alone; we don’t often get such opportunities.