A couple of weeks ago, so I am told, one of the Raunds Methodist Church leadership team was in a meeting with another member of staff when they were setting dates for something. A date was suggested and the Raunds member said "I can't make that night, we have a Raunds leadership team meeting". They were told "You can't be, Dave is away at the Mission21 Church Planting conference then". The reply was clear "Of course we can, we do it all the time, how else would anything get done".
Well sure enough, on Tuesday evening this week they had the leadership meeting while I was in the last session of the 24x7 Discipleship stream for the day.
By Wednesday morning I had copies of the minutes and sure enough they got lots done (mostly focused on practical getting on with the mission of the Church - like preparing for the coming 24x7 prayer week) plus ecumenical stuff, property stuff, finance. One of the other great things was the progress they made on providing a permanent Prayer room for the town - something I have been dreaming of for a long time.
I got some other updates by facebook and tonight I got a copy of the letter they have sent to St Peter's CoE inviting them to join us for Sunday lunch after the joint covenant service in January.
This is absolutely how it should be. Methodists believe in the priesthood of all believers. Ministers have a representative role not a hierarchical one. Every leadership team should be strong enough and empowered enough to meet without a minister present and every minister and leadership team should make sure that they trust each other for this to be a normal event.
I have blogged quite a few times over the years about the Raunds Leadership Team and this is just another example of why I have the best job in the world. Well except for the bit that will see me up a ladder hanging the nativity lights on Saturday morning (all future Churches should be only one story high please).
It was of course thinking about this that freed me up to book another conference (see my post 42: Evangelicalism and Fundamentalism in Britain Project).
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