Reignite

Morning communion I suprised myself by actually getting up and going to the morning communion worship. I would have liked to have stayed in bed. But this is usually the only time in a year I take communion in a completely Unitarian setting, and that's important to me. The service was pretty traditional, too traditional for me really. I think a lot of non-Christian Unitarians go to this service so it would be good to show them something really radical one year, instead it rather comfirms the idea that the Christian end of the movement is pretty traditional, which it is. But good not to have a sermon I think, good to show that you can have a service without a sermon. Business meetings Celebrating our congregations, procedural motions and these motions: The government should set up a body that deals with all religious bodies equally since Unitarians and Jews have been thrown out of the Churches Main Committee when it was reorganised. Apparently such an advisory body is beeing set up,...

(Not exactly live anymore but still faster than any other news source) This is my continuing coverage of the Annual Meetings, I only report on events I attended. Morning worship Another friend of mine, Csaba Todor, the Sharpe Scholar from Transylvania at Unitarian College, led this worship. He asked me to do a reading, so I had to be there by 7.30. It was good though, he was a very hypnotic way of preaching without notes, really draws you in. Business meetings Reports from Commisions, celebrating our congregations, Motion that Mike Tomlin (former GA Treasurer) be given Honorary Membership. Growth Process This was a sort-of open space technology process in which the whole assembly talked about what we meant by growth and what priorites we wanted to have as a national community to bring about growth and renewal. I think this was a useful process and I hope it got people excited about working for growth, and a lot of people worked hard to organise this process (including myself as I was s...

Business Meetings Nothing too contentious going on. A new innovation via the Denominational Support Commission is to 'celebrate our congregations' through a two minutes slot for one congregation per district. I like to see this kind of thing which should showcase our most successful and innovative congregations, though clearly through the presentations some are more innovate than others. Mortions (in roughly the order they came) And I'm paraphrasing. The General Assembly congratulates the Women's League on its 100th anniversarry. Well duh. Non-contentious. The Ministerial Fellowship is recognised as an affliated body to the General Assembly . Not every minister was in favour of this, I don't think anyone else cared about it very much. We believe prison if often inneffective and encourage other more effective rehabilitation. Another social justice motion that is entirely worthy but entirely ineffective as a way for us to do effective social justice work as a communi...

Don't worry, I haven't forgotten about you. I have been meaning to blog before now, but I've only got internet properly set up in my room today. I've brought my camera with me, but not the cable to connect it to my computer, so I'll upload photos when I get back home. So I'll try to catch up with my brief coverage: Minister's conference Nothing of interest to report. International worrkshop We had speakers from USA, South Africa and Uganda. The Ugandan speaker, Mark Kiyamba, was most interesting to me, as I already know a fair bit about Unitarianism in the USA (obviously) and a bit about South Africa as well. It really excites me to hear about growing Unitarian communities in Africa. Could it still be possible that the renewal of our faith could come from the third world? Historically Unitarians have been really rubbish at supporting emerging Unitarian communities outside of Euro-America, I really hope that might change. Hymnbook panel The new book should be...

All of a sudden GA is upon us! Early because Easter is, it starts on Wednesday. I'm travelling down tomorrow for the Minister's conference. It's being held once more in Hatfield. I shall try to blog live from GA as usual. I'm going to take my laptop down as I think I should be able to get wireless in the room. So blogging should be easy. Watch this space.

But I've been really enjoying getting into some good ol' theologising.

Happy Easter from a snowy Manchester.