It has been interesting reading the blogs of those who have been at Blackpool, most of which say the big underlying theme was 'inclusion'.  It's a great theme, and a great topic, but actually living it is not always so easy.  There's the hypothetical level of inclusion 'what would you do if...?' and the real life version, 'what do you do now that...?'

Sometimes people ask me what I love about my church, and I usually answer 'the diversity'

Less often people ask me what is the biggest challenge of my church, but the answer is also 'the diversity.'

Being inclusive, and being diverse, means being open to trying to hold together, in a creative and healthy way, sometimes contradictory viewpoints and understandings, each of which may be equally earnest and equally hard won.  Sometimes it seems that the good of the whole has to be at the expense of the hopes of others; sometimes a bigger picture has to supplant a smaller one, at least for a while. (Note deliberate use of 'a' not 'the'; how post modern am I?!)

It is easy to say a church is inclusive, less easy to live it.

It is easy to say a church is diverse, less easy to be it.

Far easier for a church to be exclusive or prescriptive or uniform.

I love my church because it works so hard to be inclusive.  I love the graciousness of those who keep silent out of love for others, I love those the willingness of most to engage with new ideas, I love that God keeps sending us challenges to our understanding of diversity that stop us ever getting smug and thinking we have it cracked.  I love that sometimes I struggle to know how best to lead this crazy, wonderful group of seekers, servers and followers of Jesus.

Sometimes, when people ask me about my church, I say 'I hope heaven is like this' and I do.  But this isn't heaven, it's real life, and sometimes we get it wrong and sometimes we get it right.  Sometimes it has the potential to be like the other place if I, or we, foul up.

Some of my readers may think I am alluding to them at various points in this post, and maybe I am, and maybe it's the people who think the oppsoite from them, and maybe it's both. We aren't a perfect church, not everything can satisfy the needs, desires or beliefs of anyone.  But with God's help, we keep living the experiment of inclusivity.

So, I am really glad to hear that BUGB was picking up questions around age, gender, sexuality and race and trying to think what that means for inclusion.  For people not steeped in British Baptistness the import of this may be lost.  God's Spirit is at work among British Baptists - well at least the BUGB branch thereof anyway - to frog march us into the 21st century, to smell the coffee, and to start thinking what inclusion really looks like.

I have just ordered a reocrding of the whole of Assembly (how sad!) and look forward to hearing what was actually said and how it might relate to the lovely, crazy, church of which I  am privileged to be part.