Introduction To The Word Wall

Sometimes things just pop into my head, usually inspired by something I've noticed, something I've seen or heard during the course of the day or week. It takes me through a little mental gate, down a path, one stepping stone thought to the next until it takes the form of a shareable blog post. It's not necessarily a bad approach, in fact it has its advantages, but I would like to try and incorporate a more structured or planned element to writing, at least for a while and see how that pans out. While there are writable worthy moments in life that simply happen and can in no way be anticipated or predicted, it might not be a bad thing for me to knuckle down and attempt to be more organised, more disciplined, think about things in advance, not just write and post. 

In other words, I’m experimenting. I hope you’re happy to bear with me? 

So, things to write about then. Hmm. Jump in any time with suggestions, that would be marvellous. I did however, come up with one idea.

We have a word wall at church. I’ve always liked it, which would hardly surprise you.  Here's a photo so I don't have to laboriously describe it and you don't have to wonder if the picture in your head is the same as what I mean - unless of course you've seen it which lots of you actually have.

Each word on the wall was chosen by people in our church family at a time of enormous change. We were asked to consider what single word might signify what church is to us. This is what we came up with. 

So I’m thinking, why not make good use of this entire wall of words? 

What if we were to take each word or a group of words in order to think about what they might mean for us all. We literally live with these words displayed visually in our church building but how do we all actually live as Christians in the context of these words, regardless of where we each are?

It's been several years now since the enormous change in our church happened. We knocked down the old building and built a new one. Many of you may have experienced this same process. It requires faith, commitment, prayer and a lot of dedication, especially from those directly involved in the practical work. 

These days, the wall of words is starting to fray a little bit around the edges. It’s very easy to walk past it and not really see it any more, to think of it as simply decoration. It’s very easy to overlook it and to forget what the words mean. 

Obviously you don’t need to go to this particular church to think about all these words. They each draw attention to an aspect of faith that is very much worth spending time on. 

I hope by doing so, we will be encouraged to probe, examine and assess our thinking about life, faith and church in a way that takes us closer to Jesus. I suppose this could be titled a series in discipleship but really, as is often the case, I don’t know where the words will lead in the end - may they be refined in the fires of God’s word-kiln. Psalm 12 (MSG)