The big day arrives

I was at the Mainstream conference this week in rain-swept Swanwick. We had a good time. Mike Breen and Ken McGreavy did the main sessions and were, on the whole, excellent. The seminar strand focused on discipleship and particularly Lifeshapes and, again, they were full of useful stuff. I'll blog about Lifeshapes later.

Since returning on Wednesday, I've found getting ready for today a bit like pulling teeth. It's taken ages for the sermon to come together - even though I have known in broad outline for a week or more what I want to say!

Today is also the day when we are holding our lunchtime church meeting. Around 150 people have signed up for lunch - and no doubt others will stay who have forgotten to do so. This means that there'll probably be twice as many adults there this lunchtime as there are at a normal Wednesday gathering. This in itself suggests it might be worthwhile repeating.

It'll be interesting to see the quality of conversation that happens and how many people who aren't yet members in the formal sense but who feel some sense of attachment or belonging to our community attend and participate. It'll be even more interesting to see how members - especially members of long-standing - respond to their contribution.

I think I'm looking forward to it - though I'm nervous too.

On another - tangentially related note - I see on Maggi Dawn's blog (www.maggidawn.typepad.com) that some Anglicans are getting nervous about their church leaders or employees blogging. As she says, blogs are a good place to float ideas and have conversations. They also give interesting insights into the character and interests of the blogger. I agree. They are not places where anything gets decided. I'm not sure I've said anything here that I haven't said to people in other contexts face-to-face. Since when has conversation been a bad idea?!