Some weeks ago, we took the decision to abandon the two Crucible modules scheduled for May/June – ‘Church Unplugged’ in Manchester and Southampton, ‘Jesus Unplugged’ in Exeter and London.
In light of the ongoing restrictions, it is clear that we will not be able to resume the course until at least the autumn. Hopefully, we will be able to gather then and run those modules during the autumn. We will then plan to start the next year of the course in early 2021 and run through a calendar year. But we’ll need to wait and see how the situation has changed before confirming these arrangements.
In the meantime, we are planning to experiment with ‘Crucible Online’ in order to sustain momentum and help us reflect on whether some online sessions might form part of the course in the future. Online learning has been really popular in recent weeks and there are indications that many courses are in future going to be at least partly online.
What we are envisaging initially are two evening sessions (7.30-9.15) on Wednesdays 24 June and 22 July. These sessions will explore topics that are not taught on the Crucible course (but might have been included if there had been space for them):
Wednesday 24 June: ‘Multi-Voiced Church’ (Stuart Murray Williams)
Wednesday 22 July: ‘Guests, not Hosts’ (Simon Mattholie)
There will also be plenty of time for conversation and sharing together. The format of the evenings will be as follows:
7.30: Introduction/prayer
7.40: Teaching session
8.10: Breakout rooms
8.30: Plenary Q&A
8.45: What have we learned/applied from Crucible? OR What are we learning in lockdown?
9.10: Prayer
9.15: Close
These sessions will be open to anyone who has participated in the course this year in any of the venues, and we’ll circulate information to others through our networks as well. It may be that these sessions will also act as a taster for people thinking about participating in the course in future.
There will be no charge for these sessions (although donations are welcome). We’ll use Zoom as the platform. Please contact Stuart by email to express your interest.
We hope you can join us for one or both of these sessions – and feel free to invite others.