Thinking Together

On Saturday we had our 'church conference' - when we spent a few hours together listening, discussing, praying and questioning what it means for us to be the church of Christ today. 'The War Department' and I juggled the kids between us and each got to the bits that we could. Stuart Blythe was our 'rent-a-theologian' for the day, whose talks stimulated and provoked our discussion. Stuart was an interesting choice as a speaker for this event, because although being a lecturer at the baptist college, he's hard to pigeon-hole, is always provocative, is an analyst of Scottish culture, is not afraid to stir up contention, and is a superb communicator. I think it would be fair to say that Stuart would rather be disagreed with by people he has made think, than blandly agreed with. And make us think he did.

I should add that his funniest characteristic is a little facial contortion he does slightly comically when he has said something funny or controversial - it's rather Kenneth Williams, actually!

In terms of what we got from it, I think that there are no obvious, immediate answers - rather Stuart has helped us instead to start asking more of the right questions. Instead of leaping straight to premature conclusions, I hope we have instead began a process of reflection about what we are about and therefore what we do.

PS: Stuart's blog has an interesting comment on Darfur today, read it here.