INTENSE DAY 2 - THE CHURCH / THE FAMILY OF GOD

Whilst the rain was coming down outside we started today’s Intense session with what I consider to be a true classic of the ‘ice breaker game’ world:
Chinese Charades.

If you’re not familiar, it’s like Chinese whispers, but instead of whispering a word you mime it. Hilarity ensues.
In today’s game one team started off miming ‘a stare out’. By the time this innocent little activity passed through the whole team it ended up looking like the crane kick out of 80’s classic movie The Karate Kid (watch the video to see what I’m on about).



What has this got to do with today’s subject, the Church / the family of God?
Well kids, good communication is very important in relationships.
The next game is a little harder to relate to our subject, but we had a darn good go.
In teams, everybody had to use their mouth’s to get jelly babies out of a pile of flour, then run over to a bowl and spit them in there. Wait, did I say bowl? I meant ‘church’. Acting as some kind of ‘mouth evangelists’ they had to bring people into the safety of the church.

Or something like that.

Ok, so it was an excuse to get everybody good and messy. And it worked.

Jenny Constantine gave the talk today about being part of God’s family. She introduced a lot of the people at Intense to an idea I first saw in the brilliant Screw Tape Letters by C.S. Lewis; that the Church isn’t just your local church or even all the churches in the world, but every person who ever was and ever will be a child of God. How about dem apples huh?!

It’s like God, being outside of time can view the whole Church in time and space, all at once.
It’s a nice ‘get your head round that’ idea. I like it!

We didn’t talk about cheese or moods in my small group today. But Phil did get his trumpet out and provided us with some encouraging ‘work harder’ music whilst we filled in some evaluation forms to help us reflect on what we had heard.

I’m a bit concerned that our groups corner of the carpet smells faintly of wee. We’re not sitting there tomorrow, no sir.

To end the session Andy led a big team game. I was hoovering up spilt flour by this point so I haven’t got a clue what it was about. It looked like it involved putting on a cape made of clear plastic. That’s got to be good….right?