Surprise surprise continued.

One last thing,  over the years we have been on a search  around the Uk for less organised and more organic expressions of Christian community and have often been disappointed with what we found. 
Frank Viola made this statement in a recent blog post... 

"In discovering what is often described as an organic expression of Church is almost always a small-is-beautiful version of the institutional church. And some of them are highly-legalistic, highly-toxic groups"

This is sadly what we have found, not in all cases and it's probably a bit unfair to say that everyone was highly toxic, but most had not given the headship over to Jesus and were often lead by Mr and Mrs Pastor who even with the best of intentions shape things according to their own agenda.

Anyway back to my original reason for posting, "How then shall we live and how shall we sing the Lords song in a strange land" ? 
There is much to learn from those who have gone before and as I/we journey on with the dispersed community from Northumbria, structure our day around the daily office, make ourselves available to God and each other, leaving space to give hospitality to the stranger and being Church without walls we will find ourselves on a new adventure, the next part of the journey, Further up and Further in. 

By the way being Church without walls is an inclusive thing, we feel comfortable with all of the community of saints regardless of labels and distinctives but our roots are firmly with those who intentionally live a shared life, who regard nothing as there own and who exist in genuine koinonia community.