Today the 'new look' BUGB website hit the wires or wirelesses or whatever it is these days.

It is pretty easy to navigate and it is good to find the tabs relate to things I actually want to find.

I think what impresses me most is how they have managed to avoid using male-only language for God without it getting clumsy or contrived.  They have also had a reasonable attempt at what we mean by prayer and worship.  The new 'what makes a Baptist' which replaces 'who'd be a Baptist' is a lot more gentle in its style and the images have a slightly quirky sense of fun about them (though you may hate them) which is hopefully going to make it more appealing (very tempted to print off a set for my folk!  Though it seems you cannot download the Lordship of Christ..!).

If you haven't visited it before then now is your big chance [;-)] - just click here and try not to get too dizzy as the photos scroll by on the home page.

I like Brainiac, it is irreverent but generally good clean fun.  I also like the Tickle's Teaser slot - things that make you go hmmm.

So here's one for you...

A friend who is a minister in another denomination has resigned their post because they no longer believe in God.  My instinct is to offer to pray for them as they adjust to their new situation - but what should I pray and, more pertinently, what should I say to them, as prayer is no longer in their vocabulary... hmmm.

I have now read Brian McLaren's 'New Kind of Christian' trilogy.  I have enjoyed what I have read, and found his take on some of the arguments very refreshing - I even find a kind of process theology that I can almost buy into.  More importantly, perhaps have been echoes throughout of things I've always felt/known/wondered.

In the last book we meet a character who arrives sporting a teeshirt that has the slogan 'I'm not that kind of Baptist.'  That made me laugh, in a kind of 'I know what you mean' way - and then pause, because actually the joke was based on the kind of judgement the plot line seems to eschew.  But I guess we can all say, "whatever kind of Baptist I am, it isn't 'that' kind," whatever 'that kind' is.

The Neo character who tries to get the Dan character to problematise almost every word he uses reminds me (in that respect) of someone else; that too, made me smile and maybe Casey reminds me a someone too, though without the beaded hair.  Other characters, well I guess we've met most of them somewhere along the way, and the last book especially picks upon some of the tensions that ministers face as they try to support people with differing perspectives and to allow their own thinking to be challenged, stretched and refined.

If I have a criticism of the final book, it is the invention of a few artificial reference works (that you only discover are such by careful reading) cited alongside some real ones.  This feels a little ingenuous, despite the generous hearing given to the likes of John Stott and N T Wright on the doctrine of hell.

I'd really love some of my folk to read these books - but they'd probably be scared silly by them and assert that they definitely are 'not that kind of Baptist'! 

It will now be quieter for a few days as I complete a few thousand tasks covering for other church folk and then vanish to Brighton to meet a couple of thousand other Baptists - but not that kind!!!