As a regional team we are thinking that in the next year or so, with the transition that the vineyard is facing in leadership, we will need to inspire greater participation in all areas of Vineyard life. So, we want our way of gathering and celebrating to be inclusive on a few levels. 

We will gather in the main hall for a worship time followed by a teaching that will introduce the theme "Life Together" and what God may be saying to our Region. This will lead us into a ministry time. Child care will be provided for children up to age 6, with older children and youth participating together in the session. Following ministry time there will be a late night special event for "Connecting". We are setting up three different rooms for three different flavours of connecting: one that is game oriented, one that is music and youth oriented and one that is quieter for conversations. 

In the morning after the devotional time and worship there will follow a big event we are doing called "The Splash".This will be an intergenerational time  of visiting several workshops or pavillions over a period of two hours. Each pavillion will be creative and/or participatory and each will employ a different artistic medium. There will be visual art, puppetry, drama, drum worship, stories, dance, food, etc. The idea is that those leading each pavillion will highlight the things that God is stirring within us in the Atlantic Vineyard, while at the same time demonstrating a way of communicating that is both inclusive and, in some cases, participatory.  We want people to get the idea that they count, that everyone gets to play in the Vineyard, and that there are many ways for this to happen. We hope that people might be stirred to keep on "telling the stories" of what God is doing and stimulate a whole new level of creative thinking and communicating. We also know that to pull this off we will be involving way more people than usual, but we think that even the way we are approaching this supports our goal.

After a final worship time Larry and I will be doing a joint input session that will help with visioning the future as well as calling for the ongoing participation of people in the things to come. Ang Moore will be looking after the kids up to 12 during this input session. After a ministry time we will be moving out doors to have an "Old Fashioned Picnic" type of thing with races and prices for kids and adults followed by a BBQ.