Reflections on the “Baptist Ministers Refresher Conference”.

I have just spent three days at the Ministers Refresher Conference.  The group of Ministers I work with (the Baptists) have set aside some cash to send us all on a refresher course once every five years.  When I received my invitation there were two things that struck me as slightly amusing:

• I only fully qualified this year!
• I have been a Minister long enough to need refreshing!

It has been good for me to renew some old friendships and make some new ones.  There are about 200 people here (There are about 2000 Baptist Ministers in the country) and it has been good to look around and recognize the variety of different situations and circumstances that my colleagues serve in.  Other observations are:

• Baptist Ministry is very male.
• Baptist Ministry is heading towards retirement.
• I am one of the youngest here, I think that less than 15% of the participants must be under 40.
• Baptist’s are involved in some very creative approaches to mission and evangelism.
• My car is the oldest in the car park!

They gave us permission not to attend every session, so I skived a couple in order to work with one of my colleagues on the subject of resurrection.  The Incarnate Network web site was hacked, and we needed to resurrect it.  We have managed to get the content back up (it still needs a bit of formatting), although we haven’t managed to get the user log in working yet.

Some of the highlights for me have been:

• Stimulating sessions on Esther (stimulating because I had much to disagree with).
• The many conversations about Ministry, Mission, Church Planting and Evangelism.
• A conversation with Paul Goodliff (the leader of the Ministry Department) about the nature of ordination and the demeaning nature of having your “Hand Shake” at the Baptist Assembly.
• Meeting up with and re-establishing friendships with people I don’t get to see very often.
• Being able to put my life and work into the context of the Union of churches that I am a part of.

The only thing I don’t like about being away at times like this is being away from Louise and the Children.  Being away makes me realise how much I like being around them and missing them when I am not arround.  I go home this afternoon, and I’m looking forward to celebrating Isaac’s ninth birthday.

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