The United Church moderator, David Giuliano conducted a workshop at Cameron Hall in Whycocomagh on September 15th. About 25 people attended ranging from young teens to seniors.
David initiated a fun-filled but chaotic opening exercise to loosen people up by having the group form a circle (as best we could) and toss soft hackey-sac balls back and forth. The players were numbered and a player with one number had to toss the ball across the circle to a player of another number. We had to remember our numbers. It may seem easy except as we were doing it, more and more balls were added to the circle and people’s aims weren’t always accurate. It was great fun and good exercise.
Following that, we actually got down to some serious work -with play-dough. Five groups were formed at five tables and each table had a large ball of play-dough. Our challenge was to take a portion of play-dough and illustrate by sculpting or modeling what “church” meant to us personally.
Some of us chose to act as individuals and express our own concepts of “church”. Some made interesting doves of peace while others made crosses or models of human brains (without the skulls) to indicate open minds. Others acted as groups and constructed church buildings with people and open doors indicating a welcome to all who choose to enter. Others formed the Eucharist with baskets of bread and a cup to symbolize the wine. One table sculpted the “tree of life”. The idea, of course was to get people thinking about the meaning of “church” by not only coming up with their own ideas but by looking at other people’s ideas.
It’s always more enjoyable to share ideas when we can have fun doing it.
For the third exercise, David asked us about such things as “spirituality” “cooperation” “room for improvement,” “outreach” and all of the components that make up “church”. As he named each characteristic, each of us was encouraged to take a place in an imaginary line stretching from one end of the auditorium to the other to represent our congregation. One end represented how lacking we were while the other end represented how well we felt we were doing.
Finally we were asked to think about where we felt the church was headed and how it would get there and we were to illustrate our plan by drawing it. Needless to say there were many and varied displays of artwork.
The workshop ended with a round of singing from “More Voices.”
Rev. Sheldon & Christine LeGrow
