This week sees the last of the Bloomsbury summer outings. During the summer instead of the lunch and speaker that form the centre of Tuesdays at Bloom, we have a series of outings to various places. This year these have included going to Walmer to see Seyan, going to Kenwood Park, a tour of St Paul's, and today's visit to Amersham. Different people come on different trips, though there is a core group who come on most of them, drawn from those who are regular at Tuesdays. Some of these destinations are on our schedule each year, others are new. The trips give us the chance to see different parts of the country, to travel in a group when travelling somewhere alone would be less appealing, and to have time together and get to know each other a bit better.
As we come to the end of them, I have been wondering about the whole idea, and how it fits into the life of a church. After all, at the heart of being a church is the intention to come togeher for worship, and to work together in service (at least, that is one definition). Nowhere is the idea of being travel agent included in that kind of description.
But the central identity of church is fellowship. We are none of us church alone. Church is community; all the theology and practice of church, whatever flavour it is involves more than one person. So, something about our trips together connects to this sense of being in relationship with each other, and having the chance to give those relationships more depth.
There is also, in being church, something about destabilising or challenging our set ways of thinking and experiencing the world. The account of the world we give in worship, the practice of turning our commitment away from ourselves and towards the other all, when we open ourselves to their full impact, challenge our presupposition of how things are, and who we are. And to travel - to spend time in a different place, to meet different people, experience a different environment and discover new things - all of these experiences also open us up to a world that is bigger than our normal, and offer us possibilities that we are not all there is, and our immediate experience does not defin the full truth. Many of us are not able to undertake long or demanding journeys to be shaken from our small world view - but short trips with people we do not deliberately choose but who are there because they too have chosen to go, to places others have chosen for us, and on days that may not suit our schedule; these trips may at least offer a glimpse, for those who choose to see, of the deeper possibilities that the life of faith calls us to.
And lest all this seems too "deep and meaningful", such trips ar fun - they are a celebration of being alive in a wonderful world. And that surely is involved in church!
I will miss our Tuesday trips, as we move into autumn. Thank you to all who have organised them, who have hosted us, who have made suggestions, who have come along. If you have not taken part before, perhaps you might join us next year?

One of the gifts that Bloomsbury gives to the wider church is the way in which as a church it sets its ministers free to serve in a wider capacity. It's not an easy gift, and there are times when it takes negotiation, but we can usually make it work.
And so this week, I am going to the European Baptist Federation Executive and Council. We will discuss much of importance to our life together throughout Europe (not just a geographical reality; as the Rector of the EBF seminary, International Baptist Theological Seminary in Prague likes to point out, Baptists are much better at mission than they are geography)
But if my experience of other such gatherings is anything to go by, the real meaning of such an event is as much in the conversations and sharing of news, the making of new friendships and the dicovering of each others' stories. It is hard to make these kind of comments without sounding trite or sweetly pious - but they are nonetheless true.
Yesterday morning, we have a visiting preacher, Rev Dr Maggie Dawn, chaplain at Robertson College in Cambridge and writer-theoligian. She started her sermon by helping us to think about the importance not only of propositional knowledge, but also of story and imagination in shaping who we are and how we live. And it all goes together. To hear stories from other people of their experience, their insights, their encounters - and to offer our own - all of this enriches not just our "knowledge" of how the world is and can be. It also shapes our imaging, our imagination of how the world might be. And thus the Kingdom is coming.

This week, life at Bloomsbury is dominated by Simon's news on Sunday that he will be leaving us at Easter. He doesn't know where he will be going yet, but it has become clear that for the sake of the family, and for the good of ministry, it is time to look for work closer to where the family is based.
A change in a ministry is always a testing time for a church. It raises all sorts of questions, some absolutely obvious, others much harder to put into words. We wonder about what life will be like without the person who is leaving, we wonder what plans we need to out into place to take things forward, we wonder what changes we will need - and will have to - make?
And below it, we wonder about why somebody is leaving, what is "better" on the other side of the fence perhaps - or we wonder how we might feel relief without feeing disloyalty, we wonder how to make the choices that will need to be made, and we wonder who we are as a community, and who we might be in the face of such great changes.
There's a lot of wondering. We are fortunate that Simon has been able to give us a long time to adjust and to make plans. And we are also fortunate that we know, even within our wondering, that the life of the church congregation is not ours alone to sustain, but is part of the life that God is expressing in the world. The stories in the gospels, the stories of the church through time is the reminder that in our wondering as well as in our knowing, in our getting it right and in our getting wrong in making decisions, God works, and we look for the coming of the Kingdom. We have responsibilities, we need to take our roles seriously - and we can trust that God works in and through who we are, and that is our hope and our future.

One of the delightful things about being a minister is that you get to make many of your mistakes in public. And I managed a whole series in worship on Sunday morning. I think the most obvious one was the muddle of the Lord's prayer. Having invited people to pray in the language with which they were most familiar, I then found myself caught between the two versions I am most familiar with - the Scots and the English (shades of my recent visit to Edinburgh) In case you don't know, in Scotland, we debt for ever, in England we trespass for ever and ever. And the paralysis that hit me as I tried to remember where I was led to me missing the line out altogether! Well, if you're sitting in the congregation, and get in a muddle like that, it's survivable. But when you're up front, and yours is the voice leading through the PA system - not a good moment. So, thank you to all of you who had the graciousness not to point it out to me.
But it does raise an interesting question about prayer and how we pray. What does it mean to get it "right"? And what happens if we - according to some sort of judgement - get it "wrong"? So often, we find it hard to pray because we don't know "how" to do it. And, more fundamentally, who makes those judgements - or what is right and wrong, what is "good" and "bad" prayer? I am convinced more and more that, as children of God, all our prayer, coherent or muddled as we judge it, is the babbling of infants; and we know how a loving parent adores the babbling of the infant. And how much the infant enjoys babbling - and is totally unselfconscious, totally un-self-judgemental (is there such a word and if there isn't why not!)about it, for it is the experience of communicating, and having fun in it that matters.
And what freedom might that bring in prayer.
I fully intend to get the Lord's prayer right next week. But - does it matter if I make a muddle?

And - carrying on with public mistakes - sorry, still haven't got the comments sorted; I can comment, but nobody else yet. Not quite the result I was aiming at. But work in progress....

the saga continues - and apologies

Well, I still haven't managed to sort out the great comments mystery. But in the process of doing it, I discover how many people have tried to comment, and have discovered that their comments were ignored! Of course, I can now assure them that the comments weren't ignored; I haven't mastered the setting well enough, and I didn't know that there were comments. So - if you have ever tried to comment, and wondered why I was ignoring you, please accept my apology. I got this one wrong, and I haven't got it right yet... I am working on it, but don't hold your breath! And don't try to comment....
But saying sorry about this does prompt me to blog on something I have been pretending not to pay attention to for a few months now; apologising, and its impact. I apologised in church for something some time ago. I had made a bad mistake, and it was appropriate to acknowledge that, and say sorry. And so I did.
And I was surprised by the reaction. It was well received -indeed, received as if I had done something very huge and significant.
This is where it gets difficult, and why I have put off blogging about it. You see, it wasn't that huge - but as soon as I say that, it sounds as if I was not taking the issue and my mistake seriously. I did; indeed, I do. But I also believe that among the people of God, where I know myself to be safe, and trust myself to be accepted, surely it is not some sort of huge ordeal to admit that I got it wrong, and ask, trustingly, for forgiveness. After all, we do it every time we gather in public worship. We share in prayers of confession, and acceptance of forgiveness. For me, that is a central and serious part of our gathering.
And if I do it there, why should it be more significant, or more major to ask my fellow believers to know me as God knows me - a sinner, and to forgive me? Of course they did, as I trusted they would. But I remain disturbed that we have created a context in which it somehow seems to be some heroic act to admit a failure and apologise. Surely, it should be the most natural thing among believers; is that not a central part of who we believe we are - those who can risk being honest about who we are, with ourselves and with each other, because we believe that in the love of God, we are known, loved and healed?
So - sorry about the comments muddle. And yes I mean it. And no - I don't feel threatened and/or heroic in apologising. Because even more than in my failing, I believe in God's love and forgiveness. And so I dare to trust myself to yours too.