the final comment before we left at the end of the london mind body spirit festival from a masseur on a neighbouring stand was that we had good energy which was nice to hear. i didn't notice at the time but it looks like he had the ten commandments tatooed on his arm (from this photo)?

a team of us have been on the dekhomai stand for the fourth year from grace, moot, cms, gillingham, contemplative fire, sheffield, greenwich – all connected through a network of friends. we offer spirituality from the christian tradition. the word dekhomai means welcome or welcoming place and our approach is gentle and warm (we hope). people can have foot and hand massage, make a prayer cord, be prayed with (which pretty much everyone wants to be) and explore the jesus deck. the encounters with people there are personal so i don't plan to narrate those. we had a sense of god's presence (good energy?) and that some searchers had been nudged by god in our direction. what we offer is a gift with minimal opportunity for any follow up, though it is interesting that having been there a few years we definitely have people coming back to find us.

one guy i chatted with was interested in jesus but frustrated with the arrogance of christians – it re-assured me that a gentle approach fits well in that environment as opposed to more confrontational types of evangelism (that i tend to think of as devangelism). one guy who visited us was wearing a t-shirt saying dear god save me from your followers which made us smile but i can understand why some people feel that…

the jesus deck came into its own this year i felt. this was partly because we have got a bit more confident using it and partly because some of us used the process of lectio divina with it which was a creative combination thought up by martin thomas when he used it at a psychic fair. he got some cloths designed that you move the card(s) round through four stages. he explains how he uses it on his web site. and if you are interested you can buy a cloth through him – contact details are on his about page. the cloth/lectio gave a structured process for using the cards that i found really helpful. the jesus deck is a set of cards of the four gospels. each card has an image, a scripture text and a theme. through whatever means (drawing blind or selecting from a number of cards turned up) the person chooses 1, 2 or even 3 cards. the story the cards tell is then narrated and explored and then we explore how it connects with the person's own story. it is amazingly simple but opens up all sorts of conversations and connections that we then pray about together. it's not a reading in the sense of predictive reading, but it is a different way of reading (lectio) a scripture.

if you have been thinking about getting involved in this sort of thing go for it. it's a great space to be in and is definitely an area of quiet growth