Festival of Talents Festival of Talents? What is it all about? As part of exploring God’s vision for the church, we plan to emulate the Parable of the Talents (Matthew 25:14-30). That is, taking the gifts and talents that God has given us and putting them to use by investing them in the community. The idea is to show God’s love and grace to those around us; people in the parish, those living in and around Norwich and the groups of people we have a heart for. How will this work? The church will be divided in to four groups of approximately 100 people in each. The groups will effectively be self-selecting, based on people’s strongest passion for a particular project / idea. Each group will be given £1,000 to ‘bless the community’. In other words, the money is to be used to show God’s love and grace to others. The idea is that this will give every person in the church a chance to get involved, the freedom to experiment and the opportunity to use your gifts, passions and enthusiasm. What sort of ‘talents’ do you mean? This is the exciting part – you get to decide! We want people to come up with ideas that are fun, exciting, attractive, challenging and different. So pretty much anything goes! For example, you could use the money and your God-given talents to show God’s love and generosity in one or more of these ways: A music festival or street party Free cups of coffee and pastries for all the shopkeepers in a parade of shops Paying the debts of those who may lose their accommodation because they cannot afford to pay their bills Clearing a street of rubbish & graffiti Painting a wall of the children’s ward in a hospital Providing Sunday lunch for a group of homeless people Giving away drinks and newspapers to travellers at a bus or train station Whatever it is, you have the freedom to be creative, but most importantly, to prayerfully seek God’s heart for the groups of people that we feel He wants us to reach. What next? The first step is to identify the community or group of people with whom we want to share God’s love and grace. This means we need to be praying for God’s inspiration and guidance. Three meetings are planned for early 2008 to provide more information about how the ‘Festival’ will work and give us a chance to think of ideas that are fun and exciting which will convey our message of God’s love and generosity. There will also be time to pray about our ideas as we assemble them. The dates for these meetings, which will be held in the Meeting Place, are: Sunday 3rd February 4.00pm Tuesday 5th February 7.30pm Wednesday 6th February 7.30pm Refreshments will be provided at these meetings and we hope you will take up the opportunity the church has to share a little of our amazing God’s love with others.