I’ve decided to restart my blog again, for the umpteenth time. This time, I’m trying to establish the habit of blogging daily, at the end of the day, as an alternative to journaling. Primarily, it’s so that I will spend more time thinking, instead of blindly absorbing media all the time and just going through life in a media-enveloped haze. Secondly, it’s also to redeem my computer from the horrible uses I’ve put it to, and give some useful, positive purpose to my usage of the computer, instead of using it to do nothing except play games, read manga and watch anime – all frivolous wastages of time.
Tonight I just came back from another cell intern training session. It’s the fourth session out of eight, and we have it`every Monday night. The course is meant to help train new cell interns, which are assistant cell leaders, in our church… in preparation for eventually taking leadership of the cell themselves. It’s a bit late, since I was officially installed as a cell leader – together with Huiting – last Friday, but still worthwhile. I find it quite useful and extremely practical.
I mean, there are always some doubts as to whether we should really stick to procedures so much, but I think the church allows us cell leaders quite a bit of latitude when adapting the “standard” procedures to our respective ministries. And really, even though having a cell leaders’ training program may seem a little humanistic and “program-oriented” rather than Spirit-led, I think that the church leaders expect that this training will run in parallel with the internal spiritual development of the cell interns. That’s a nice, interesting topic to spend some time thinking about one day – how much should a cell leader rely on human principles and procedures, and how much should he/she depend purely on the Holy Spirit for guidance in leading cell? But that’s for another day.
In any case, tonight’s session was on how to facilitate the “Word” part of the cell meeting (a typical cell has four parts to its activities – Welcome, Worship, Word and Works). After going through some weekly readings and a short talk, Ps. Kim Lang did a group role-play session with us… once playing as a bad cell leader, and a second time as a good one. It was very practical and hands-on, with plenty for behaviour made obvious for us to observe and comment on. I was one of the major participants in the “bad” cell meeting, and it was amazing how uncomfortable a cell session can feel when the leader is not interested or paying close attention.
On the other hand, small things – like the seating arrangement, non-verbal behaviour, and constant feedback – really made the second session feel more alive and participatory, even though the role-playing troublemakers were a lot more… troublesome. It was illuminating to see the difference. I think I learned quite a lot… though it hasn’t had time to trickle into my conscious thought yet, it’s probably buried away in my subconscious. Hopefully I’ll be able to apply it when I practise facilitating the Word session with the group next Monday. It’s my turn to lead then.
