on giving things away

Today (Saturday) we have been on the doorstep giving away biscuits, chocolate and balloons! Today is International Fair Trade Day, and this has been our way of marking it. We have had cups of coffee and more biscuits in the foyer, (without cost) together with an extensive Fair Trade stall, and a DVD running to give more information on the whole Fair Trade movement.
The impetus towards doing this came from a recent deacons' meeting when we were reflecting on the last Winter Fair, which we did in the foyer rather than the Friendship Centre downstairs. We had stalls on the fronts steps, balloons and ways for people to see what was going on. We thought that, as an experiment in making ourselves visible, this had been a good experience. That had led us to think what was it we wanted to make visible, what did we want to people to see about us?And Fair Trade seemed a good place to start.
It has been a good event. We haven't been mobbed - but there have been people coming in, more accepting what we were handing out and - thanks to the ingenuity of one of the deacons setting up a table and a couple of chairs on the pavement - people stopping to talk and find out something about fair trade, and incidentally about us.
It seems the right way round. Rather than pushing ourselves as an institution, we have been focussing on the Kingdom we pray for every week, and the ways in which it is taking shape around and through us. The church existing for the sake of those who are not it - as good a definition of our raison d'etre as we can find; we are here, not to bring people in just so that we can be bigger, better and feel more secure, but in order that the Kingdom is embodied, the gospel gossiped and people given the opportunity to see something more than the bricks and mortar that make up the world around us.

Some observations;

• people are wary of something being given away for nothing
• children like balloons
• eye contact is difficult
• actually coming across the doorstep is hard
• the church is visible not when the building is open, but when there are people milling around
• we surprise people when we don't want anything in return
• doing something together builds our sense of community

We hope we might find more opportunities to do this kind of thing; if we can have the building open like this on a regular, even if not frequent basis, our presence - and more significantly, the presence and coming of the Kingdom will become more visible. Any ideas about what we might do?