Well, we are migrating soon; the website that is. And this blog, instead of being a link found through the website, will be fully integrated into the new one. And that may even mean we can cope with comments. But don't hold your breath, just in case.
There may be other changes on the blog - we hope that others may get involved in writing, and that it may be more of a community effort, rather than simply my voice.
That's something we are trying to achieve in various contexts within our life together; exploring ways of hearing more than one voice. We already do it to some degree when we meet on a Sunday; we hear different voices in the readings, and sometimes in the prayers. We join together in responses. We listen as people lead us through music.
But there is room in our worship for many more voices - taking part in ways already established, and in finding new ways of sharing. It is a significant part of Baptist identity that we hear the voice of God for us in each others speaking. And so it is important that we learn to speak together.
And that of course, means that we need to learn to listen well too. We already practice this when we take seriously the role of the congregation in preaching. One of the privileges in being part of team ministry is the opportunity to listen to preaching, as well as offer it. And so, it is with some authority, even as a preacher, that I am qualified to comment that to listen well, to listen participatively, to allow the word to be the Word by listening, engaging, encountering and expecting is at least as active as preaching.
Without good listeners - listeners who expect to hear and require one to dare to speak so that there is the possibility of hearing, and whose hearing is one that is committed, then there is no word spoken that can become the Word in the world.
Please God, as we learn to bring more and more voices into our worship - and our blog - we will pay as much attention to listening well, and letting the Word be heard among and through us.

Sorry to be late with the blog this week; as Barbara used to say when we were working together, I'm not sure what I've been doing, but it's taken me all day (or two!) But one of the things I did yesterday was spend some time with a young man who comes into the church at various times. At the moment, ife is particularly tough for him, and I am very grateful to those who, yesterday, were able to provide exactly what was needed. And so was he, and he spent some time telling me just how much it meant to him. The phrase he used several times was "I don't know how this church does it; it's so amazing!" After saying this, in various forms, he then went a little further - "I suppose it's something that has been handed down". I'm not sure exactly what hemeant by it, but it has remained with me as a wonderful description of something important in the life of any church; the formation of a way of being, a culture, a set of habits - I am not sure exactly what to call it - that determines how we will act, and what kind of people we will be.
The thing about this way of exploring and creating an identity is that, unless we pay close attention to just how we are forming such who we are, we will be formed unreflectively, by habits and patterns that are not actually those of the Kingdom.
Part of what is happening when we gather - to hear the story of Scripture, and to explore it together at XChange, in home groups, in Sunday Club; to share bread and wine - and all the other food we eat together; to sing and to pray,- we are given opportunities to develop certain ways of being. We learn to listen and talk carefully and to know ourselves as part of bigger story, to serve one another, and to identify who we are through a pattern of self-giving that is cross-shaped.
One of the challenges of developing this kind of life is to move it from beyond the formal things we do together, and let these patterns invade the normal stuff of our life - the encounters which happen unexpectedly, the moments when we are taken off guard, the times when we are called on to act without time to reflect or to put up our guards.
My friend yesterday was reflecting that, in the matter of caring for people, meeting them where they are, and being practical in our response, is deeply engrained in who we are as a community. This is a matter for deep gratitude. Those who have gone before us have helped to shape a community of the kind that for those of us who live its life now, we are shaped into this generous and effective caring.
Which leaves several questions for us here and now. Not the least of which is, what are we shaping and handing on as the continuing identity, sense of what it means to be here and to be the people of God? And what are we doing to make sure it becomes deeply embedded in us and in the life we offer others?

Various surprising people over the last week have told me that they regularly read this blog; surprising simply because it had not occurred to me that they - you, and you probably know who you are - knew that it existed. One of the frustrations of not being able to manage comments is that our blog appears to live in a vacuum. (Despite my - admittedly not very skilled - best efforts, turning the comments on still eludes me. But our new website is due very soon, and then all will be different, I hope!!) And living in a vacuum is not a good place to be; indeed, I guess technically this image doesn't work, since nothing can live in a vacuum. Interaction is important, knowing how people read what is written, and the impact it has. And many of you have been very kind in your responses.
This need to interact is becoming important for us at the moment, especially as we think afresh about how we make contact with those who do not claim faith. We are grateful to those who have agreed to help us think about this, and there are all sorts of things to think through. And not the least is understanding people and the contexts in which they live and think. It is very easy, especially for those of us who have been part of the church for a long time, to forget that life and ways of understanding the world can be very different; generational differences, cultural differences, linguisitic differences and differences of ways of viewing the world - all of these matter as we try to find ways of communicating. If we are going to make connections, then it will have to be with people as they actually are, and not as we think they should be, nor as we know ourselves to be. I write this blog each (well, most) weeks about things that matter to me, in ways that make sense to me. I am grateful to those who make the effort to contact me - even when technically it is difficult. But it will be so much richer, so much more meaningful, once we can communicate.
And our commitment to communicate beyond our walls and beyond ourselves require even more determination to understand and make links, and to explore ways of communicating that may challenge how we see and think and expect; but which will be in line with the God who moved out of a safe and secure place into the risk and openess, identification and vulnerability of incarnation.

The noise around us continues, and very exhausting it is too. The struggle is that there is nothing to do but get through it; like so many things that happen without our choosing, the only way through is through.
What happens to us when we get "stuck" in a situaiton; when, despite all our best efforts and all our most fervent wishes - even prayers - nothing seems to change, and things remain as they are, ways we don't like.
This can happen in so many areas. It can be our own experience of ourselves (as we move into February, there is in some circles much laughing conversation about how tattered new year's resolutions now look, for example); it can be in our care of each other - when we want life to be better for the people we worry about, and there is nothing we can do to change things; it can be as we contemplate the state and position of the world - situations that look impossible or uncertain, and which do not seem to offer any possibility of change?
I am more and more convinced that the call in such times is just to stay - to hang on in there. In conversations with various people who work in community based groups in the area of the church, one of the regular things that is commented on is that we (the church here) are here for the long-term; we don't dash in and out, we are not dependent on the kind of funding that can all too easily be withdrawn with little or no notice, we are not going to disappear if things get tough. It's the kind of thing we tend to take for granted, so it is interesting to note that it is something others see about us.
It matters in our internal life too. Some of us live in and with situations that appear to offer no hope of change. It may be ill-health, it may be demanding responsibilities, it may be something much harder to put into words. But one of the things we offer each other is staying there, walking the hard - or simply long - path, not giving up when things don't change despite our best efforts and deepest hopes.
Thank God for the grace of carrying on - and thank you to all of you who do it with us and for us.

Being around our building is, once more, to be very aware of the noise that building work can create. The building next door, this time, is the one that is being reconstructed, and there has a been a great deal of hammering and drilling. And today, there was more work being done on the road at the back, involving what appears to be elephants dancing on biscuits - loud and crunchy!
Also on a Tuesday - the day I am writing this - we have our "Waiting Prayer" meeting; a half hour of silent prayer, whcih, for those of us who attend, is a welcome oasis in a loud and busy life.
I ofund myself fantasising during the prayer today (I make no claims to be a disciplined prayer!) about running away to somewhere green, wind swept - and without mechanical noise. It would be so much easier to pray there, runs the imagining. I would not be so abstracted or wooly-witted. I would really achieve depths of communion with God.
But in fact, I believe that praying in this context - surrounded by noise and at times rather overwhelmed by the business and busyness of life in the city - keeps us real. If our prayer and worship only "works", only appears to have reality in pleasant, quiet, perhaps even "romantic" contexts,then we need to ask just what we think we are doing. There is no chance of that happening in our building; we are kept in touch with the life and demands, the joys and the challenges of living among people day to day.
And it keeps our day to day life real too. For as we pray and worship in the midst of the city, we keep alive the links between the complexities, joys and ever-pressing presence of living in our lives and in our city. Praying and worshipping in the noise and busyness not only stops our worship become isolated from the realities we live in; it also stops the everyday and immediate realities of our living becoming separated from the deep presence and activity of God.
So I am trying to give up my fantasy of a green space in order to be able to pray truly. And if you would like to explore with me even further the challenge of praying in our situation, come and join me sometime.

During the past week, I have been having a conversation with a friend about a particular series of novels. The main character in the books is somebody who lives according to a very strong moral sense, and a deep commitment to right, good and love. Fans of the writer often speak of the impact of this writing on their own sense of self, and of the model the character provides.
In talking about this - and other - books that have mattered to us, I have become even more convinced, or perhaps it is that I have managed more clearly than usual to articulate, the recognition that for many of us, there are guiding texts; they may be books, or films, music or TV programmes (Patrick Stewart, when he took the role of Jean-Luc Picard, captain of the Star Ship Enterprise, in the series Star Trek, commented that he had been taken aback by the realisation that there were people who took his character as a life-model - and the responsibility that placed on him.)But whatever they are, they form a narrative that speaks to us of character, and what is admirable, of aims and how we might achieve them, of what it means to be a person, and how to do it.
The question is not will we have a base narrative - the question is do we know what it is, and have we chosen it with awareness.
Perhaps the year when we reflect on the translation of the Scriptures that we know as the Authorized Version, it is a good time to think further together about how, if at all, Scripture can be a base narrative for us?

The waiting over, the celebrations begun - and, it feels like, ended. Christmas is sooooo past now; we are into the new year, we are faced with putting away all the decorations, we are trying to lose the weight we have just put on, we have packed up the carol books....
But if Christmas means anything more than just a happy holiday, a lot to eat and some pretty pictures (to say nothing of the sheer delight of the nativity play)it mustn't be something we can pack away. Christmas is about birth; birth is about beginning; beginning implies continuity. And so, how do we continue? How to we go on with Christmas, or the implications of Christmas.
Perhaps we can do it through the other dominant theme this week; a new year's resolution. Perhaps we can resolve to do better, to live differently, to be better people.
Except - is that what the birth is about? Is that what we have been waiting for - a chance to try and get it right (again) and discover (again) that we can't do it?
Or might we have been waiting for something else? Might we dare to believe that the meaning we are offered in the birth is that it is not all down to us, that we are not the centre of the universe, nor the only ones who are responsible, nor is our strength all there is?
It's a new year, it's the Christmas season, it's the time when the promise "God with us" is offered anew.
I wonder if I can trust it? I wonder if you can? Might we do it together?