We had a lovely communion this morning, gathered in a circle and saying a liturgy influenced by central european baptists and the Northumbria community.
It was simple and profound. The community here is a bit special. It's also unreal and unreproduceable elsewhere. But it gives hints and pointers to ways of being church elswhere that are very attractive.
One of the reasons for this is its conscious striving to be a baptist community. Here our identity as baptists is taken really seriously. I've just had a conversation with a serbian who has has a masters in Anabaptist and Baptist studies, about who we are. Again McClendon was named, Dayan pointing out that theology as biography has to be the place where we start to create baptist community. Everyone's story matters, everyone's story has something to teach everyone else about what it means to live by the one story at the heart of our gathering, the story of man from Nazareth who is the Lord of glory.
Again, I was struck as we broke bread and shared wine this morning, how vital it is that Jesus was fleshy, sweaty and earthy (no decetism here!); and how our stories with all their pain and laughter are caught up in his.
This is the kind of place that makes you look at things in fresh, appealing and suggestive ways. I'm sorry our time here is almost over...
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