Whilst blogging at an event can be a dangerous thing two things have struck me during the first day.
The first comes from an interesting conversation in the bar about weakness. Jesus incarnation, ministry and death are an embodiment of weakness "he did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the nature of a servant." So what does this say about the nature of the Triune God?
The second from some discussions about a mission initiative. Not withstanding the merits (or otherwise) of the proposal we do need to thing about a Baptist theology of mission. Most of the work done by BUGB in recent years seems to have taken Matthew 28 as its cornerstone. Clearly this is an important part of mission thinking, even if we might want to reflect further on the passage, beyond it being a command to "go", and think about what the text says about authority and discipleship. But a theology of mission needs to consider how, in Christ, God was reconciling the world to himself and what it means for us to be Christ's ambassadors. Mission arises from our being sent by God to join in with the mission of God. If council could start to get to grips with a theology of mission during today we could make a worthwhile contribution to the life of the denomination!
More later
Distinct Reflections 
It’s only dangerous cos you know that your actions will be observed by half the people there who are also frantically blogging/facebooking (or whatever the verb is)and those of us who have real work to do are using reading your blog as a distraction technique.
Beware the camera in Jonathan’s tie and Big Brother Sean watching from down under… ;o)
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Hi Catriona
Sean’s knowledge, from the otherside of the world, of things that were not yet apparent to those of us at Council was impressive.
Blogging is dangerous because I’m aware that whilst I might think that something is drivel, people have usually put a lot of work into something. I try to follow the notion that we should be hard on issues and soft on people. Often Council works on something over a couple of days and I feel that its not fair to blog about something midway through the debate. There is also the danger that, in the heat of the debate, I might blog something that I later retract.
Anyway the distraction is over for now: back to work
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