och aye

i have to do something about getting a small camera. because I only took hand luggage to scotland, i couldn't fit mine in and then we have blue skies and snow on the hills. still, thanks to john greenshields and his wonderful hospitality, i was able to use his and look forward to seeing the pictures in due course.

the next technology error was i forgot my little apple mac adaptor to fit a data projector. of course, normally this wouldn't be a problem, as i could transfer my powerpoints to someone else's laptop. this, however, was my first try out with keynote - the lovely apple presentation software. again, you can transfer most of the data, but i can't transfer the graphics (well i couldn't). thanks to the chef, chris, at the atholl centre. chris just happened to have one at home and saved the day(s)! why the fuss? with keynote you can actually draw a bell curve and i've spent ages looking for a bit of kit to enable anyone without a maths degree to do this - i found it then nearly blew my first chance. thanks to david, who commented 'lovely bell curve' at just the right point - probably owe him a whisky for that. on that point - don't believe what they say about scots being tight with their money - thanks again, more generally, for the hospitality. alot of thanks - it's definitely the people who make the difference.

how did jesus manage without a laptop?

one of the fascinating areas of reflection after such a visit is the comparison between scotland and england in terms of baptist church life. one might be tempted to think there's not likely to be much different, but it felt quite a different culture in a whole variety of ways. in some ways the guys there reckoned they were 15-20 years behind england in terms of church culture. oh yes, guys in this context equals male - very unusual for me these days to sit down with 20 ministers, all of whom were male. women are 'allowed', but, as i say, as it was 20 years ago here. other differences? the illusion we can make this thing called church work - by simply doing what's not been generally working for 50 years, better is in clearer focus. my hunch is scotland's moving in our direction, and fairly rapidly, but the degree of consciousness is less than here - not that i assume we're in any way fully aware of it. there's a much greater appetite for hearing the scriptures there too - i don't sense this is simply they're higher up the slippery slope we sometimes seem to be on here - it's deeper in their psyche than it was here even 20 years ago and i hope they don't lose that evident passionate desire to hear God. there's other stuff too - they have better hills - real mountains!