Ashley Tamminga

"Blue Like Jazz: Non-Religious Thoughts on Christian Spirituality" by Don Millar is very raw and written in casual, contemporary style. Teenagers (any 20-30 something even), turned off by organized religion and the "big c" Church would find this discussion of rubber-hitting-road Christianity refreshing, I think.

Women absolutely need women!

I got an idea from a group of friends in Pittsburgh to start what we call a Soup Group. A small group of women I collected from different spheres of my life meet for prayer and a simple meal of soup and bread. It started off as a once-per-month event, where we'd meet in a different person's home each time. During the summer, since attendance was much more sporadic, we had pot-luck hors d'eurvres and focused on building relationships. By the end of the summer, we'd decided we'd rather meet twice per month! It's been such a blessing to see the friendships blossoming over the dinner table, between women who were strangers one year ago. 

At first we started out sharing over the meal, and then praying after. However, starting this fall we felt we needed more structure and guidance, so we're learning to pray through the Psalms. We covenanted to practice what we learn from our reading each week, and to pray for one other specific person in the group. 

One thing I loved about the neopolitan themed retreat was the ages and stages mix. Our group certainly meets a need: we often fall through the crack between college-and-careers groups and small groups at church made up of young families. We're almost all between 20 and 30, newly married, no children, university friends have scattered, and we're building communities around our new situations in life.  However, we plan to have some "guest pray-ers" join us for a meal to tell us about the power of prayer in their lives, and the different stages their prayer lives have gone through (read slightly-older-women!). 

That passage from Hebrews could be our Soup Group slogan! I think women's fellowship needs to be so much more than coffee break and our churches need to develop ministries that address that. However, women can and do often build these circles of Christian support around themselves all on their own! So I would encourage anyone out there reading this to look around, find leaders or develop your own leadership potential, and listen to the Spirit's prompting about what kind of group you could create. It could have any kind of focus: one that I've thought of myself is fellowship amongst first-time women office-bearers. There is so much potential!

Our Teen Club consists of 3 kids from a local Christian school, and three kids who go to other schools, but who all know each other from outside of teen club/church. Another layer of complexity in our case is the fact that 5 are female and only one is male. 

The three and three definitely cluster together into little comfort-zone groups, and as leaders, I don't think we ever expect the 6 kids to become fully integrated. However, we are always trying to point out their common experiences to them. If one of the groups is dominating conversation, relating stories of their experiences at school that week, we try to ask the other group if they ever experience similar situations. There are some things that all grade 8 kids have in common: science fair, too much homework, bullying, field trips etc.  By our questions (asking questions is often the number one thing we leaders spend time doing during a teen club meeting!) we try to keep the conversation ping-ponging back and forth between the two groups. I don't know if acknowledging the divide and NOT trying to dissolve it constantly is a good thing, or if it's the best way to keep the kids comfortable within the group. Open to your thoughts!

It's hard when the group is so small to purposefully split the kids up into different groups when we plan activities or team sports, because it's so obvious to them what we're doing! Thankfully, they have been very graceful about that; even though we know THEY know what's going on, they don't complain or point it out. 

I'm looking forward to seeing what others respond to this post!