This week at Monkfish Abbey we did Once in Awhile Church. (Once in Awhile Church was Jim Henderson’s idea and you can read about it here. Another missional community in our Missional Cooperative has recently adopted this model too. V. interesting, if you ask me.) Since it’s Lent, we thought we’d do something that focuses very specifically on Jesus. Here’s how it went:

1) Played a couple songs about Jesus off the Ordo CD from Church of the Apostles while people sorted through our stack of Jesus pictures and chose one that resonated with them.

2) Sang some worship songs about Jesus (Vineyard favorites and a couple Mike LaJoie had recently written). Folks who weren’t up for singing didn’t have to. Our journals were out and people worked on their reflections re: the Jesus pics while we sang.

3) After the music, Alicia asked people to share why they chose the pic they did. (I’m hoping to scan in the pictures the group chose and get them to blog about it…but we’ll see. I always have more plans than I have time!)

4) Then Rebecca led us in Communion. By the way, we recently solidified our Communion rite/ritual a bit more. One of our new members, Charles, had mentioned that he was never sure when we were actually starting Communion, since it’s usually a blended part of our meal. So I asked Rebecca to help me write something a bit more structured, because I know Communion is a ritual that really speaks to her. I’ll post it next.

5) To close, Paul prayed our traditional blessing, which goes like this:

May the Lord bless you and keep you
May the Lord make his face to shine upon you
May the Lord turn her face towards you
And give you her kiss of peace
In the name of the God who birthed and created you
The Son who is your brother and friend
And the Holy Spirit, she who is your guide.

It was a nice little format, I think, especially for a group who’s really working on re-discovering who Jesus is and why he did what he did and said what he said. It gave people permission to connect with Jesus in whatever manner they could, instead of insisting that he be related to in any one particular intense way. Plus, because people actually spoke up this time we were able to learn more about one another and understand each other’s place in their journey a bit more. (Sometimes we get a great deal of silence – people are still learning to trust each other –trust that we won’t lecture one another or point fingers and yell “Heretic!”)

While all this was going on I was downstairs with the kids. We were learning about the Passover meal, and Jesus’ Last Supper, and why we eat bread and wine each week at dinner. I was trying to help them connect the dots a bit. Also, I wanted to help them step into the story a bit so that they will have a road map when we do Passover in a couple of weeks. I thought there were going to be five kids, but it ended up being just our girls at the last minute. Since they were begging all day for extra Mommy time, it worked out just fine. We also made tyrptiches of Jesus for Lent. They aren’t finished with thiers yet, but when they are I’ll post ‘em. I think my girls’ artwork is great, great, great!

Well, that’s what we did on Thursday night.