thanks David

We had our retreat for the South West Regional Church Leaders this week, which is always a really good place to connect with those from some of the other Tribes! This year we had David Coffey along to lead our sessions and I was delighted a Baptist was so much appreciated as we're not renowned for our retreat input.

The fact I was extolling the blessings of my Sat Nav to him en route from the station to the conference centre, and then we lost, is another story.

David is drawing towards the end of his five year stint as BWA President, which has involved a huge amount of travel.Whilst I fancy some of that, I'm not so keen on so much life from a suitcase. However, among other things he brought some reflections from his broad perspective and the one I've dwelt with was his comment about how we have failed to contend for the principle that life always precedes organisation. Bearing in mind his 'we' was addressed to denominational leaders he talked a little about:

- why do we choose to give our best energies to structures?

- we were chosen because we were considered 'safe', but safe leadership heads organisations, whereas dynamic leadership is called to lead a movement.

- life precedes order.

- relationships before structures.

Now, as I've been living in the tension between organisation and movement for some time now, I want to thank David for some bread for the journey.

baptist union - wikipedia or oxford concise?

Well, we’re back from our Minister’s Conference at Sidmouth and it was a great three days in many ways – the place has something to do with it – a beautiful coastline, which is, for me, somehow more special in February than July – it’s certainly less crowded. From what I’ve heard and read so far, people enjoyed and sensed God’s blessing in various ways, so it sounds like it went well.

The thing which came back to me, however, the morning after the conference before, was a throw-away line in my own contribution before bread and wine - when I said the Baptist Union is designed to be more Wikipedia than Oxford Concise. What did I mean? Did I mean it? Don’t get me wrong, there’s not a queue of people asking me those questions, but they’ve come back to me.

Wikipedia is a recent, current and post-modern phenomena and has the characteristics of movement all over it. The Oxford Concise, however, has been around a long time, it’s part of our heritage, history and traditions. Whilst editions are always up-dated and reflect the nature of the shifting use of language, it smacks of an institution. Both are concerned about definitions – Wikipedia goes beyond dictionary into encyclopedia, I still use both.

Jimmy Wales, who was the catalyst behind Wikipedia says: ‘I couldn’t write an encyclopedia by myself, from the very beginning, Wikipedia was a community. The main thing about Nupedia, which was the precursor to Wikipedia, was that is was a failure. Essentially, the design of Nupedia was very top-down, in the sense that there were seven-stage review processes, committees for this thing and the other, and basically very little work ever got done. I always say, yes, Nupedia was a failed model, but the one thing it did for us was create a strong sense of community that got Wikipedia off to a strong start.’ ‘As a catalyst, it’s all about letting go and trusting the community.’ I just wonder whether we’re developing a stronger sense of community among many of our Ministers because similar things are going, but we still use the Oxford Concise as our main source of reference and, as a result, don’t feel we can write anything in, which will make us part of the movement?