As the dust settles from this year's conference, and the cheques have been posted off around East Midlands for countersignature and settling of bills, we begin to start work on next year.

Firstly, where to go.  Our long established practice is a low cost centre, with really quite decent rooms, adequate (if unexciting) food, a bar and various seminar rooms.  The down side is sharing with the Mother's Union (every year so far, even if we change the dates!) the Free Church of England and other diverse groupings - a load of Methodists last year, I seem to recall.  Down, not because of who they are - we love them dearly, in so far as we know them - but because sometimes we could do with a place to ourselves.  We are looking at alternatives, recognising that the cost will probably sky rocket and the smaller/poorer churhces may struggle to meet their 'contribution' and/or ministers may choose not to come.  Tricky.

Then who to speak.  We are as disparate a group of ministers as you could wish for, but I think it is fair to say that we are Baptistly tolerant of each others heresies and foibles.  Being Christian and being Baptist does, for these few days anyway, take priority over left/right/high/low/sacrament/ordinance/green book/red book/OHP/guitar/organ/whatever issues.  Praise God!  So who might be suitable to speak is a good challenge.  We are trying to shortlist 'safe enough' and 'fun enough' names at the moment.  'Enough' is important - no one is perfectly safe (least of all JC) but are they going to be safe enough for our people?  We don't need a laugh every two seconds, but we don't want something so heavy it depresses everyone.  We don't come just to have our feathers stroked, but we don't come to be trampled on either.  We have some good names on our shortlist at present, male and female, left, right and centre, academic and popular but - and I suspect this is the key - they are all Baptists and they all know about being a Baptist minister.

For me, the 'where' is less signifiacnt than the 'what and who', for others the converse may be true.  Because those on our shortlist are - generally - well known in Baptist circles, they will be being asked pretty soon if they are free.  My hope and prayer is that this time next year we will be a less anxious planning team!