Following on from my thoughts that lead to this idea I would like to explore a measure that might help and also encourage families to spend more time together.
What I’m imagining (speaking as a non-cook! Oh dear!) is the provision of cheap, reasonable quality meals, for families. To qualify for access to such meals you would need to turn up as a minimum of one adult and one child. The meals would be on one or more weekdays and would be available between 5pm and 8pm. Payment for the meals would be necessary except in exceptional circumstances. It would be attractive because the family would need to make less effort to have a meal and yet still have a meal at a very reasonable price.
This would appear to improve contact between family members (addressing the issues outlined here) and also be a way to create relationships between church people and non-church people.
Would be interested in your comments.
Can see lots of plusses (eek, spelling, help) to this in terms of offering something laid on for families to engage with and not putting pressure on but offering as a service. In fact anything that the Church does to support communities is good!
It brings up the whole issue of educating people how to be families! Part of me despairs at the fragmentation of community generally and wonders whether there is anything we can really do, until we get to a point where there is a kind of ‘communal implosion’ and people start asking for help with what it means to be family are we really going to be doing any more than sticking a plaster on a festering wound!!!
Yet, when I’m not despairing I think that offering new ways of exploring meaning, family and hope has to be something which the Church has to offer.
So an entirely contradictory and almost incoherent response to your mail, Mark, sorry about that.
My viewpoint slightly jaundiced by 12 or so years ministering in London where no one seems to talk to each other, and now living in villages where fragmentation and alienation are taking over from community. I alternate between the hope that our local Church communities offer and a deep desire to give up and let it all go to pot!
Also, would you say your idea (which i should have said is a good one, as usually got carried away with responding without thinking and let my fingers do the walking!) is one for a rural or urban community – i can think of lots of reasons why this might not work in a rural community – but might have worked for urban.
I’m going to stop now, am going round in circles.
I also have to say that anything that leps with the family has to be a good thing. The one question i would ask isif people don’t relate now as a family, would they take up the offer from the church ofhaving a meal? Agreeing totally witht he comment that anyhtign the church cn do to help families is a good thing, but just wondering whether the arget group is a target tgroup that wouldn’t take up the offer. You knwo the same way, that those who probably need parenting lessons,a ren’t the ones who would turn up for the provision.
I would also say that other things owuld have to come into paly for rural communities.
But Mark ultimatley, I would say yes, great idea, and the Church should be helping families, and communities as and where possible, but just wonder if people would take them up on the offer.
That is a problem Andy. It would seem to have to fit in with a general concern and mission with the target demographic (to use the lingo!).
This is in fact what Messy Church tries to do. We have a time together for families to enjoy crafts together, then 15 minutes of ‘worship’ in very simple terms and then we all eat together. A proviso is that every adult is accompanied by a child/children and every child by an adult. The sharing of a meal together is crucial to building relationships with those who come. OK so it isn’t at 8.00 pm (we meet from 4.00 – 6.00pm) and we don’t charge just ask that if possible they give a donation, so nobody is excluded.