Last Saturday saw several of our group go over to Brighton for the Celebrate Conference. We saw so many friendly faces, some from Eastbourne, some from further a field.

For both Karlie and I, one of the best parts of our day was the seminar we went to after lunch. The one we chose , called ‘Heart and Soul’, was on Christian Community and led by Jo Gilbert from the Wellspring Community in Brighton.

For both of us what Jo said was very helpful in thinking about forming intentional communities and is very relevant to the direction our group is going in. Thinking back to all the work we have done last year during our preparation time, in the year of having our mass and in the sessions we did prior to Mgr Keith’s visit in January we could see so many links.

Over a couple of posts I am going to describe some of what Jo said and our reactions to it.

She began by talking about any Christian community needs a strong sense of Vision and purpose. People need to know that this community is something that warrants giving of yourself. People also need to know the community is meaningful.

Some of this work has already begun for our group. I think back to the circles diagram by Dorotheus of Gaza and to all those aspects of community that we produced together early on. Also all our discussions about being a Eucharistic Community laid some of the ground for the development of our group and its role within the Ordinariate.

Thinking about Dorotheus of Gaza reminds me that any vision, any purpose in our group is grounded in our individual and corporate relationship to God. Jo talked about this when she described the concept of Koinonia, which needs a post of its own!