I had a follow up conversation with a group I met last year on my trip to Honduras– Signs of Love. They are a ministry to the deaf– you can read the background in a blog entry I wrote last year after that trip.
While I was there again this year, I had a providential connection with that group again and heard about their progress. They had really liked the idea I gave them last year of lighting a candle at the start of our house church gathering to recognize the presence of Jesus– the light of the world– in our midst.
So they got this electric candle (pictured) because their regular candles don’t burn slowly enough. They then celebrated the Lord’s supper with the available materials they had, which in this case was bread and coke. Not very traditional perhaps, but a great example of how the church can make do with what we have.
Each time they meet, they consistently do 3 or 4 of the practices of the church. Since they are a deaf community, they have found a visual way to do that. By group consensus, they put 3 or 4 different flannel graph pictures up on the board to indicate their agenda for that meeting. This strategy is one way they seek to carry out the functions of the church as a house church for the deaf community.