Today was a full day at Railway Town Baptist Church... our AGM and Church Meeting, preceded by a bring-and-share lunch (see the photo for the spread before we all dived in!).
I am pleased to say that the AGM took 27 minutes - nowhere near my all time record of 10 minutes, but a pretty good effort all around! That did also include a lovely local tradition of minute if silence to remember a Member who had died since we last met.
The Church Meeting took about 35 minutes, and included a very productive interactive exercise to move forward with our 'Hopes, Dream and Visions'. Basically, I had transcribed all the ideas onto five large sheets of card, grouped under five headings. In the first round of 'voting' people had four stickers to allocate as they chose to ideas they thought were interesting - they put all four votes on one thing, or split them as they chose. In the second round, people had two stickers, to allocate to the ideas they now thought we the most important for now. In the last round, people had just one sticker, which, if they wished to, they could use to choose one project they would be willing to commit to being involved with.
Lots of work still to do - and people need to let me know how they voted so that we can take things forward, but it felt positive, and certainly one person said they now felt they had permission to follow through on something they wanted to be part of.
So... another good day, with yummy food, good humour and a sense of moving forward together.
This was followed by a