The Score does Open Mic

Since the beginning of this year, I've had the privilege of leading, with Danny and Mary, a new Missional Community in our church, called The Score. For those not 100% up to date with current OCC lingo, these are the small groups (that were once 'Community Groups') that meet midweek - the 'missional' bit being that we focus on one particular thing (some on an area of town, others a common interest or situation), and use that as our means of getting to know people, serving them, and helping them get to see who Jesus is and why we're so into him. The Score, as a community, is a gathering of artistic/creative people, who are spending time together encouraging each other in what we're doing, working out together what it means to be a Christian artist and how we use that, and using our arty things to get to know other like-minded people. Crafty.

Ok, sorry to those of you thinking 'Woah there Sturge, this sounds a bit serious and church-y, like!' - I just wanted to put this evening in context so you know what on earth I'm talking about - normal systems resume, as I tell you about my most recent interesting thing:

On Sunday night, The Score, as defined above, ran an Open Mic night at The Mitre, as a chance for a. us to jam together, because we're all pretty darn schweet; and b. to invite along other people we know and love to jam with us, 'cos they're pretty darn schweet too. However, we unfortunately managed to make our evening co-incide not only with the prayer and worship evening going on at OCC itself, and the church Elders' meeting, meaning large chunks of church people weren't around, but also with a particularly awesome person's stag weekend, and, y'know, the football.

The reality of all this hit me on Sunday afternoon as I was getting things ready. It can be really disappointing when you have these great hopes for an event, that they're going to be awesome, and all these people will come, and perform, and the people from the church will be on-board, and everyone will see what we're about, and yada yada yada - and then you realise that people aren't coming. I joked to my friend Rhoda, who I had the excellent fortune of being able to have coffee with on Sunday afternoon, that 'it's FINE, we'll say it's "intimate"'. I obviously said that with a little venom, and disparaging-ness.

Yummy decor, upstairs in The Mitre

Danny, our fantastic MC

Lovely Lucy

 What actually happened, is that the perfect group of people turned up. Obviously, the people who we wished could have come, we wished could have come; but it was one of those evenings when really we wanted for nothing. We had a brilliant collection of readings, poems, stories, songs, with both lightheartedness and things that hit at the core of your being. Eclectic, eh? 

Danny watching Dan

Mary

Audience rapture

And for all my earlier disparaging-ness (I think the noun might be 'disparity', but I'm definitely not confident enough to use it. Stick with making words up, is my plan.), it actually was intimate. It was like family, actually. So much so that I actually got up and read a poem. Some of you might find it hard to believe that I'd have any qualms with going up to perform, but I'm much more of a play-in-an-orchestra/write-a-weird-blog/stand-behind-a-camera kind of creative gal, at the moment, rather than putting myself into the spotlight. To quote Danny, I was 'freed from my admin cage'. That's always a nice place to be freed from!

 So! The things that I leave you with love of today are for when things don't go exactly how you expect them to, but are delightful in a different way, and of a wonderful little video of Miss Tessa Bosworth and Mr Josh Wells, singing Halo. It made me smile lot - these guys work so well together musically. Anyway, that's enough from me for now - will be back with something frivolous soon, I'm sure. I can feel it brewing...