Action

We're not just learning the rules, we're palying the game too!

I've been thinking a bit about tradition lately. One of the things that marks contemporary church (as in the Sunday service) is the traditions that are adheared to by the different faith communities.

Some of these are going to be fine, some are going to be completely irrelevant and others are going to be neither.

While I've been accused of being "anti-tradition", I am actually anything of the sort. What I do like to question is the place and purpose of the traditions we hold to, ensuring they are

1) understood by those practicing them,

2) meaningful and,

3) practical (in a sense that their meaningfulness is applicable in the daily spiritual and practical lives of those practicing the tradition).

One of the new traditions we have instigated in Alternate[Or] is a tradition of action. What this means to us is that we won't just be a faith community who meets together on a certain day of the week, we will also be a faith community which is active in real and practical ways in the broader community.

For the first time this weekend we are going to be putting our new tradition to the test. We're heading out as a group, hopefully with a few others as well, to help raise awareness of the plight of the West African child cocoa slaves.

With only a week until Easter we thought it would be good to hit the local supermarkets and use the World Vision, Don't Trade Lives campaign against chocolate slavery as a way of informing local chocolate consumers of what is really going on.

Hopefully this "tradition" will also become a part of our overall committment to discipleship. I see it as a great way to bond with new members and seekers (we have a few of those who will hopefully be joining us on Saturday) and of actively modelling our committment to Jesus through changing the face of the community, and planet - even if only in small ways.

If you are in the Bunbury area and would like to join us, we are meeting at 9am outside Coles in the Centrepoint Shopping Centre, Bunbury. Bring a clipboard and a pen, and lookout for a bunch (it could be a small bunch) of other people with similar!

I'll post a report on Saturday afternoon and let you know how it went.