Traditionally the day when we think about Jesus ejecting the money-changers and animal-sellers from the Temple.  The day when the trappings of orthodox religion that had become a barrier rather than a blessing were named for what they were.  Which always gives me pause - what orthodox trappings might we have that prevent others from being able to seek for, or worship, God?

I guess we've all had to work through how we feel about the bake sales, the fairtrade stalls, the book stalls, the sponsored-event requests... but it has to be wider than this.  Sometimes on a Sunday we are all so incredibly busy with our alloctaed tasks or catching up with that person we need to speak to that perhaps we become our own barriers?  Oftentimes, in any church I know or have known, very elderly folk will lament the loss of a time when people came into church and sat quietly, preparing themselves for worship.  Today I ask myself what I might do better to enable others to experience worship, to have a place to pray, amidst the busyness of our fast-paced world.

It is written, this shall be a house of prayer for all people, but you have made it a den of thieves...

I'm sorry, Lord, for the times when my need to pass on a message, make an enquiry or catch up with someone I haven't seen for a while detracts, or distracts from their need, their desire for prayer

I'm sorry, Lord, for the times when I have been so busy attending to details of this or that aspect of the service that I haven't taken the time simply to sit in your presence

Overturn the tables of my distracted distracting and free me to encounter the one I say I seek.

Amen.

A very moving and beautiful service led by Sunday School to day... and a powerful tradition, the carrying in of a life sized cross with this muisc played by our pianist (this is the nearest I can find online).  gets me every time.... as indeed it should.

The photo dates back 2010, and seems a lifetime ago, as I guess, in many ways, it is.  This morning I am looking forward to participating in a service led by someone else which I know will be carefully and thoughtfully crafted, participative and meaningful.

As we stand on the brink of Holy Week, as blue skies (at least at the moment in Glasgow!) herald a new day, perhpas it is good to pause, be it everso briefly, savour the moment and maybe find ourselves transported out of time and space into the eternal now of God's shalom, and into a moment bursting with meaning.

Whatever you are doing today (or have done if you are an antipodean reader) may you find joy and blessing along the way.

This from someone I value as a friend is a measured and thoughtful response to the stuff from the BUGB.

I want to reaffirm that I have valued friends right across the range of honestly held views on this, and other topics, and we do exercise mutual respect... that means we don't ask each other, humbly or otherwise, to be or to do anything just because it makes us feel better or creates an illusion of unity.  Unity is not uniformity... to think it has to be sounds a tad cultish to me.

There are more hurting Baptists right now than people might realise, across the whole spectrum, people who value unity in diversity and who long to keep fellowship.  The Pauline body image notes that if one part hurts, we all hurt.  So to all my readers, whatever your view on human sexuality, please keep loving and talking and being authentic as we journey onwards together in Christ... I might be wrong, and so might anyone else.

If there is a creed that I've always had, it is this: that I might be wrong.  That one day I might wake up and disbelieve everything I have thus far believed about God.  It has never happened, at least not totally.  But what I believe has changed, sometimes subtley, sometimes quite significantly, over the years.  At times I've been ridiculed for what I have believed.  At times I'm been pitied for what I believe.  At times I haven't been sure quite what I believe.  But always there remains this central conviction: I might be wrong.

Along with a lot of UK Baptists, ministers and otherwise, I am today saddened by this article and the underlying implications.  I am sad because of what it says, sad because it suggests that a minority should give way to a majority, even when the minority view is ostensibly respected and permitted.  I am sad for my LGBTIQ friends and acquaintances for whom this is another kick.  I am sad for all true Baptists who seek to live in a reconciled diversity.  I am sad that unity seems to depend on uniformity in a tradition that claims it does not.

So I was grateful to be directed to this sermon by a transgender Baptist minister in the USA.  It is the only sermon that has ever made me cry - and they were good tears.  Allyson's story isn't my story, but there were resonances and parallels along the way.  She has a courage I lack, and uses language I wouldn't, but she speaks prophetically and with the humility to declare "but I might be wrong".  Please take half an hour to listen...