The Dialogue Meeting that wasn't :(

Me & Melina (both of us Clay events coordinators for this year), had been preoccupied organising the Dialogue Meeting, where we invite our non-Christian friends & relatives to come & listen to a talk on the gospel & they have an opportunity to ask questions pertaining to the talk or any other aspects of the gospel. The date for the Dialogue Meeting was this past Saturday, & the venue was CCCB Coopers Plains. Preparations went well - lots of communication between me & Mel, everything look set to go. Some of us came in early to help arranging the venue for the Dialogue Meeting. Unfortunately, no visitors turned up.

That meant no Dialogue Meeting - the talk (which would have been given by Pastor Steve - it's on "transforming our lives", using Transformers theme) was not given since there were no visitors. Instead, the 25 Clay members who turned up got split into 5 groups, & we talked about the non-Christian people in our lives (friends, relatives, workmates etc) & who among them we see potential to perhaps evangelise to & expose the gospel to in the future. That was Keiyeng's idea. The people in my group was Winston, Ed, Sean & Suzanne (why is it Suzanne always ends up being the only female in whatever small groups she joins?!). We discussed, & then prayed at the end.

I was pretty happy with our group discussion , which I thought was fruitful. Also, since there was no talk, Pastor Steve had an opportunity to rest & save some energy for preaching the next morning. Also, I got a chance to catch up on some of the Southside Clayers. Everyone that turned up seemed to have a good time, & myself & Melina (though she wasn't there on Saturday) were thanked & complimented for organising the event.

Nevertheless, I ended Saturday night feeling somewhat empty, disappointed & discouraged - simply because what we planned for (the Dialogue Meeting) did not take place. Nothing against anyone at Clay - the Clayers did invite their friends, relatives, etc to come, so that's fine. Perhaps it's just bad luck that no one could make it. My issue is, quite a bit of work was put into organising the Dialogue Meeting (lots of emails, phone calls, discussions flew around in the lead up), & after all that, in the end, what happened? No Dialogue Meeting. So who can blame me for being downcast & disillusioned, for feeling that all the planning was "wasted"?? Had I known no visitors would come, I would just have organised a normal Clay social, instead of Dialogue Meeting. And also, I feel bad especially that Pastor Steve has devoted all that time in preparing for the talk that ended up not being delivered. Although, he did say that least he can save the talk for another occasion.

A few Clayers told me not to be discouraged, that I've done all I could & done it well, & I appreciate their advice. I can see their point, & hopefully I will get over this whole episode. I mean, I'm not after praises & compliments & anything like that. I just wanted to do my job, & see what we planned to happen in fact happen. I guess only God would know why things happened the way they did on Saturday night. Maybe I've overreacted a bit & taken things too personally. I didn't mean for this post to sound negative, but hey, it's my honest 2 cents. I should thank God for the discussions that we did have on Saturday night, & hopefully we can think more about evangelism & learn how to be more effective at that.