new Coffee shop coming at Roslyn
Among the many changes in the area recently this shop is now being revamped and the sign I noticed went up today - "OPENING SOON". A new coffee shop and Deli. Its a good spot and perhaps one of the significant new places within the Highgate. It will be interesting to see if it is well frequented - will it be good coffee? Can it be a spacious space for our interaction with people in the area?
It seems to me that it is an emergent space for the church in mission. A place where we could quietly and subversively embed ourselves in the wider community in some small way. I know I'll try the place and get a feel for it! Where to meet/gather and worship and be the church in a new ecclesiology (emergent) is a wide area of discussion these days and vitally important. [Michael Moynagh(UK) has a simple, yet useful piece in www.emergingchurch.info/reflection/michaelmoynagh/index.htm]
But I believe it also carries the challenge of a spatial approach and appreciation, if not understanding, about missio Dei, and the local environment. The new parish carries a sense of opening soon. Some might misread us initially as the Presbyterian language is 'amalgamation'. But we are clear that with a mission priority, then this is not a straight old fashioned notion of that. Rather for instance, we are challenged in thinking through the matter of duplication of worship 10am Sundays at centres as we now have Presbytery go ahead to be the Highgate Presbyterian Church. A hard question if you have worshiped for a long time in one place. We aleady have an 8.30am Sunday in Coronation hall and doing good stuff there under Barry's ministry. We are going to step out, break the mould and expectations and do Sundays 1 & 3 at Roslyn 10am and Maori Hill, with 2 & 4 Sundays together in Maori Hill. I hope to do simple communion fellowship worship one and all together all age one the 3rd. Between times we wil therefore open up some space to do new things. The temptation is to set it out times and all, but actually we have a growing sense of the need to let it develop in an organic manner that is a work of the Spirit and where we detect 'Christ's action' in our context. Such is the encouraging emergent spirit among us and a sense of what God is doing. At times I can't get my head round it. Doesn't mean we are all comfortable in it, but we are emergent. We intend to have a very different worship time on the evening of the 12th December when we initiate the new... we want it really to be a spacious space that if anything makes the church folk feel more awkward, not deliberately so), but one also in which the local invitees discover something about church that is new and doesn't jar. Highgate is 'opening soon'! We hope it will, like the coffee shop be a potential spacious space for faith and culture - life to interact in meaningful and constructive ways that lives may be changed, even our own - SURPRISE! And I think we need to realise and be open for that just as much as Peter had to be in Acts 10 when he visited Cornelius. Indeed, it was tougher for him in the whole process.
