STOP THE PRESS... Challenge issued!!!

After a great prayer meeting that saw us spending time praying for our nation and the lost, a gauntlet was thrown down, by Keith Holland and his cell group to our cell.

As the praying drew to an end, a bellowing voice cried out "Taylor Cell Group". Out stepped Keith backed closely by his cell group, quite an intimidating experience actually - Martin Craker, Tino Villa and Dave Simkin loomed large just behind the sturdy figure of Keith, as well as Joy, Leslie, Becca and Pamela. As he squared up in front of me I felt I had to call our cell over and so in the end we had a face off of the two cells.

What happened next was shocking but in line with gauntlets being thrown down through the ages. The leather glove in Keith's hand connected with first my right then my left check and was then thrown to the floor. Such scenes have never been seen in our offices!!! A reading of the challenge then followed, which in essence was to compete cell against cell in a quiz on March 4th.

The twist however was that 10 tickets had been printed up that were meant for our friends who are not yet Christians. Each ticket that was used would earn 10 extra points and each which was returned would see ten points deducted.

On hearing the challenge I turned to our cell and went to confer with them. Before I had the chance to even say a word, I faced a blanket of nodding faces with expressions such as 'bring it on' and 'we can do this' coming from their lips.

I stooped down and picked up the leather glove signalling our intention to accept the duel and the date is now set.

Why are we doing this? Is it because we are so competitive that we can't back down? Is it because we really enjoy doing quizzes? Well maybe a bit of the two, but mainly it's because we want to be a people who see building relationships with people as fun and entertaining. I want to invite someone (assuming everything is well with BT) because I enjoy spending time with my non-Christian friends and I know at least one of them who would really enjoy being a leading light on a quiz team.

Will we preach the gospel? Will there be an altar call? I don't think so, but we will have fun and we will be mixing with different people than we usually would and we will run the event in such a manner that will bring glory to God.

This seems like a good way to me of working together as cell groups to encourage, collect memories and stories and provoke each other to have a mindset that friends are friends and shouldn't be put in Christian and non-Christian boxes unhelpfully.

I shall tell the story of the evening in a few weeks, but until that time I shall be praying that this will be a door opening, fun filled, relationship building event, that all will enjoy and be encouraged by.