Church Weekend Away
Sunday morning services at Emmanuel are great opportunities for catching up with our church family but sometimes they can seem to be over all too soon. Times together as a church family are valuable so it was with that in mind that a large group of Emmanuel Church Northstowe headed off to our weekend ‘away’ at the end of September. We say ‘away’ because in reality, we were only a 20-minute drive from Northstowe. The benefit being we could all sleep in our own beds at night, but we were still in a different enough place for it to feel exciting and out of the ordinary.
Our location for the weekend was a huge barn near St Ives - with intermittent but ultimately satisfactory heating! On the Saturday and Sunday mornings, we met for chat and refreshments before holding services in the style of our monthly family services. Josh spoke to us from Philippians 2 and we were reminded firstly of how much we are loved by Jesus; loved so much that he would leave behind the glory of heaven to live on earth and then ultimately to humble himself to death on the cross. Then we were challenged to think about how that should impact the way that we live and love others, in our church family and beyond. You can find Josh’s talks here if you want to hear more.
The rest of the weekend was largely social and provided a great opportunity for our still relatively new church family to get to know each other better. There was ‘organised fun’ - anyone for a selfie competition or a scavenger hunt? And plenty of low key outdoor and indoor games. We discovered that one homegroup is significantly louder than the rest when it comes to a clapometer and that there are some secretly competitive church members! But most of all we enjoyed spending time together as God’s children, deepening our relationships in order to better love and disciple each other in our walks with Jesus. Roll on next year!