Creating space for gathering and reflecting

Creating space for gathering and reflection

Recently, I and another person were speaking at the North Sydney monthly Business Network Lunch associated with the Uniting Church. The title for our presentation was ‘Holding space for change’. This particular meeting had the highest turn out of female attendees ever. I asked a few of the women why they had come to this particular meeting. It was the title and the different descriptions of space used in the advertising that had captured their imagination; words such as: community space, sacred space, liminal space, suspended space and neutral space. In our presentation we also spoke about safe space, shared space, uncontested space, and cyber space. The words had resonated with their own desires to enter a space which would enable them to explore and open up to possibilities. By using particular language we were able to create a space for reflection.

Space for Gathering and Reflection

In Lieven Boeve's book 'Interrupting Tradition: An Essay on Christian Faith in a Postmodern Context', Lieven looks at the future possibilities for the church. Faced with declining attendances while at the same time a growing interest in spirituality outside the church, Lieven suggests three ways that the church may go. The church could retreat into absolutism, authoritarianism and fundamentalism, or it could embrace the marketisation of religion and compete alongside every other religion and spiritual idea, or the church can create space for gathering and reflection, a rich seed bed from which new forms of church may flourish. 

I like the idea of churches creating space for people to gather and reflect. To be a place where people gather, the church must be a welcoming place not just for some people, not just for the people who think like us, but even for people who do not think like us. This is very challenging for me. It means that when I gather with people whose ideas and beliefs I do not share, I need to suspend those ideas and beliefs for a time, to put them to the side, and step into a space where I can be open to other people, to see beyond our differences, and to find openings where together we can proceed further in relationship with one another, and where together we can tackle the issues and challenges we face in this world at this time.