How are your BELLS?

Every Wednesday a wonderful group of ladies gather around my kitchen table for a simple soup lunch together. It is a time of laughter, connecting, sharing our lives, relaxing and occasional tears. It is a great blessing to me (and I hope to those who join me), to be surrounded by other women who long to bring Jesus into every area of their lives and together to encourage one another, pray together and support each other.

After eating we get down to the joyously serious stuff. This half term we are talking about BELLS, and I'm excited about it! "A whole half term about BELLS? How do you stretch such a subject so far?" Let me explain. It's a discipleship tool the Vicar came home with from a conference the other day. My dear ladies are used to my having ideas and trying them out on them, so I thought I would give it a go.

So, you take some of your core values as a group and turn them into observable behaviours. If you can then turn them into a word you will remember then that is very helpful, I have been thinking about BELLS all week. To be honest, we have just used the behaviours the Vicar came home with from the conference, to get us going quickly, but we may think of our own ones in time. We then use our time on a Wednesday, after some worship, to reflect on how we have done with our observable behaviours. The spirit of it is, of course, not to just tick boxes, but to use it as a tool for us to grow in relationship with God. So, this is what BELLS means to us...

Bless - the core value is loving one another, so we seek to bless someone in the church, someone outside the church, and then either someone in or out of the church. It can be anything, a little blessing or a big blessing!

Eat - the core value is hospitality, so we seek to eat with someone in the church, someone out of the church, and someone either in or out of the church. We are intentional about being with others, honouring them and inviting them into our lives. Its amazing how much time Jesus spent eating with people, it must be important! (In fact,  in our Wednesday group I feel we have grown a lot together just by starting to eat together).

Listen - we want to be humble and listen to what our Heavenly Father wants to say to us, so we seek to spend an hour a week in contemplative prayer, listening to Him, rather than bringing our requests. It can be a whole hour but equally it can be six lots of ten minutes.

Learn - a sermon on Sunday is not enough to feed us, so we feed ourselves with God's Word daily. We are always reading a Gospel, we want to be more like Jesus, so its great to keep our focus on Him. Then we are also reading another book of the Bible and then any other book which will edify us (doesn't have to be a Christian one). We read as much as suits us, no pressure. We might chew on a couple of verses for days, or gallop through a book in one reading. All cool!

Sent - we are sent out into the world to be a light, to be about our Father's business, doing what He asks us to do. So we reflect and journal (to help us process and remember), ideally each day, and we ask ourselves these questions - 'Where did I work with Jesus today?' and 'Where did I resist Jesus today?'. I gave everyone a note book for journalling in to help get us started (mine was quickly covered with Cath Kidston gift wrap, it makes me smile and helps me hang out with it!).

It is early days, but I have seen my group really begin to grasp this. Wonderfully, it is equally challenging for those who have been Christians 30 years, or 3 months. When we share together about our joys and difficulties with our BELLS from the previous week we can mentor each other and encourage each other. We feel safe to say we have failed, because that is when we learn together. We can pool our bible knowledge to understand a passage we might have found tricky. We might be inspired to know how someone had blessed another, 'if she can do it, perhaps I can!' Struggling to understand how to listen to God? 'Here is how I do it, perhaps it might help'. The possibilities for the discussions and learning from one another are endless, and all the while we are each all growing throughout the week. Oh, and lets pray for each other about all of this, and when we see each other during the week ask 'How are your BELLS? What fun!