When Small Boat Big Sea meet on a Sunday night for our Lounge gathering we follow a liturgy (or pattern) for the evening, identified by the acrostic BELLS. In our community we encourage everyone to use the gifts God has given them, and also to explore and discover gifts they may not have been aware of. To this end people are encouraged to sign up in advance to lead or facilitate the various sections of the evening. This document is offered as a guide to those who have signed up, or are thinking about signing up.

A blessing is like a prophetic announcement and a prayer rolled into one. We say and gesture to someone what we would like God to do in their life, knowing that the One who blesses is listening too.

When leading this part of the evening it is good if you can get people to split into twos or threes – this makes it easier to communicate more deeply and also keeps things more on track time-wise (the more people in a group the more time it takes to bless). Since this is the first official part of the gathering, the person leading should be aware of any newcomers, who may have little or no experience of a Christian gathering.

Here are three ways people can offer to bless, depending on how well they know each other:

• You can read one of the blessings from the Small Boat Blessings sheet to someone. These are a selection of historical blessings that have been used down the centuries, both from the Bible and other Christian traditions. In this way we embrace our Christian heritage and can feel part of something bigger. This may be a good way to bless someone who you don’t know very well, perhaps if they are new, or if you feel awkward asking them more personal questions. This doesn’t make it superficial – using other’s words for a blessing can be a powerful and moving experience.

• You can ask someone where they would like to see God’s blessing in their life, and then say a short prayer for them. People may come with things on their minds that they want to talk about. This gives them the chance to share, and allows for a sensitive response. This may be a way you can approach someone you know better, or even a visitor, if you feel confident enough. 

• You can also bless someone by pointing out ways you see God using them, positive qualities in their lives, gifts and skills they have, or general words of encouragement. In this way God is using you to bless them directly! You would need to know someone reasonably well to bless them in this way.

This is just a guide, so people can bless in whatever way they see fit (did I mention hugging or holy kissing?)

People are pretty good at eating without any guidance! This is a great time to get to know people by sharing a meal with them. It’s also a good opportunity to make newcomers feel relaxed and welcome. Once a month we will participate in Communion with one another during Eating. The person leading this should explain what we are about to do, and why. It may also be appropriate to have a short time of silence to give people the opportunity for confession. It is our practice at Small Boat to pass the bread around first and then the wine, into which people can dip their bread. Communion can be done as creatively as the leader wishes.

Someone once said that listening to a person is a powerful expression of our love for them. In our silence-starved world, we want to model the value of listening to God as an expression of our love and worship.

The listening time is an opportunity for people to hear God speak.  If you are facilitating this time then you should think about how you can create an environment in which God can communicate with us through his Spirit. God can speak to us in many different ways, direct and indirect, so there is a lot of freedom in how the facilitator shapes this time. Here are three approaches that are currently taken:

• Past Listening – You can encourage people to share about times they have heard from God over the past days or weeks. God speaks to us all in many different ways, and hopefully people will feel free to share their stories.

• Present Listening – You can facilitate a time of reflection, meditation, and listening to God. This may be time of silence, or it may involve music and activity. There are many creative ways that this time can be spent. It may be appropriate, if time permits, for people to share how God has spoken to them that evening.

• Future Listening – You may like to spend the time giving people some ideas or tools that may help them listen to God in the future. This could take the form of personal stories, or perhaps some practices you or others have found useful. While it is important that we continue to learn to listen, it is always good if we can begin to put it into practice on the night!

Listening can take any of these forms, a combination, or something completely different.

With a passion for people to grow as disciples of Jesus, we value the place of Learning in our weekly rhythm. The Bible plays a major role in our community life, and we want to encourage a deeper engagement with and understanding of the Bible in our Learning times.

It is recognised that people learn in many different ways, so at Small Boat we like to encourage the use of different teaching styles. Here are a few examples of what this could consist of:

• Learning By Listening – This more traditional teaching method is still very helpful for many people. It could take the form of talking about a passage or theme from the Bible, explaining the context in which it was written, and giving suggestions of its relevance today. It is often better if this approach still has an element of openness to dialogue, perhaps giving the opportunity for comments or questions of clarification. There is also the opportunity to use storytelling or creative Bible readings with this method.

• Learning By Discussing – Using this method people could be guided through the particular teaching subject and encouraged to discuss their thoughts in groups. It’s amazing what new insights people can bring to things we have taken for granted for years. It could be that questions are prepared for people to consider, or people could perhaps ask their own questions as they arise. It would be good to have a chance to share together what has been learned, perhaps with the leader summing things up.

• Learning By Doing – At our subMERGe gatherings people are used to participating in individual and group activities that require the use of all the senses. It is also possible to take this approach during our learning times, encouraging people to ‘learn by doing’. This could take the form of an activity with a teaching point, like Geoff’s wool network of relationships at camp. It could also be an act that expresses an emotion of God, like writing protest songs about injustice or sending letters of encouragement to persecuted Christians. This is probably the most difficult method to use, but it can also be the most powerful. To overuse a cliché, the possibilities are endless.

A further note about the learning time is that many people feel intimated about volunteering for this time, feeling that they need a theological degree to lead the learning.  That is not the case - you can lead learning by leading a discussion or by doing practical things.

However, if you have an idea for learning, but are not confident that you can pull it off, we encourage you to volunteer and to partner with someone who you think has the gifts to make your idea work.

We believe that our lives are expressions of God’s mission in the world through us. This final section of our gathering gives someone the opportunity to share what they do in their day-to-day lives. This could be their jobs, their leisure pursuits, or the friends and family they spend time with. After the person has shared, others in the group comment on how they see them imaging God in their lives. It can be very encouraging to hear this feedback, especially when people point out God’s mission in your life in ways you never imagined.