Next week it is the Baptist Assembly in Scotland - which means I'll be over in Dunfermline for three and a half days and probably offline (I may top up my mobile broadband, haven't yet decided).  It is also the October half term for most parts of England, though not all.  So what?  Well this week I've had emails from two lots of folk I know asking to meet up during that week.  A minister friend because his children are participating in leading worship at the Assembly (I'm really looking forward to that bit as I missed the equivalent for BUGB in May) a former colleague because he is visiting relatives in Edinburgh.  The really 'small world' bit is that the second family have booked to stay at the exact same place I will be staying, so we not only get to meet up but to have no worries about where.  The world is tiny.

Yesterday I had a fun - if surprisingly tiring - day doing the filming with Libby.  Apart from trying to persuade Holly Cat to be filmed (which we eventually managed) it all went pretty well, and hopefully Libby has some usable quotes and good footage.  The only hitch we had was severe disruption to local trains which meant abandoning overground in favour of subway at one point, which lost us some time.  Anyway, the small world thing is that her mother grew up and went to school on Northampton, not exactly a million miles from where I did.

In a weird kind of a way, I find a connection between this and one of the concepts I am exploring on Sunday - an African understanding of family.  Recognising our interconnectedness and interdependence ought to impact our attitudes and actions...

Spotted this on Matt Stone's blog today and thought it was interesting/useful.  Lots of similarity between Anabaptists and Baptists, unsurprsingly, but also some differences.  See what you think.

(From Palmer Becker's "What is an Anabaptist Christian"; you can see the original in text form here)

(Tried  pasting it in but the formatting went skew-whiff)

I am sitting in an abnormally tidy (and dusted!) living room, as I am waiting for my house guest and fashion journalist in training Libby Page to arrive (cue polite applause!).  So I thought I'd just give her blog a quick plug... it's called love pink which is just so funny as I 'don't do pink' if I can avoid it.

So, tomorrow we will be doing some bits of filming around Glasgow, at home and maybe even at church as part of her project... I'm kinda looking forward to it.

Just before I began treatment last year I had a private photo shoot which was fun and helped me 'escape' for a while.  There's a nice sense of circularity that now I can put something back by going in front of a camera again.  I'm not great in front of a camera, so I hope she has some good tricks up her sleeve - sure she will have.

I'll report back in due course.

A few folk have noticed that my sidebar linking other blogs has been updated and have asked (off blog) about some of the changes. 

Now and then blogs become 'defunct' because their authors find better things to do with their time.  Other people decide to delete their blogs for various reasons.  Occasionally I feel that my interest in a blog probably isn't shared by my readers. 

This is just to say that I have removed links to one or two blogs on this basis today, and please don't read anything sinister into it!

Today's PAYG used this parable-type thing from Luke 12:42 - 48

The Lord answered: Who are faithful and wise servants? Who are the ones the master will put in charge of giving the other servants their food supplies at the proper time?  Servants are fortunate if their master comes and finds them doing their job.  A servant who is always faithful will surely be put in charge of everything the master owns.  But suppose one of the servants thinks that the master won't return until late.  Suppose that servant starts beating all the other servants and eats and drinks and gets drunk.  If that happens, the master will come on a day and at a time when the servant least expects him.  That servant will then be punished and thrown out with the servants who cannot be trusted.  If servants are not ready or willing to do what their master wants them to do, they will be beaten hard.  But servants who don't know what their master wants them to do will not be beaten so hard for doing wrong.  If God has been generous with you, he will expect you to serve him well.  But if he has been more than generous, he will expect you to serve him even better.

Scary stuff!  A good one for those of us convinced God has called us as ministers to wrestle with periodically.  If I am a servant among servants, entrusted in some way to care for the others, how do I measure up?  I have a feeling this is about far more than material greed and physical violence.  Should Jesus walk in on my church, and see what I'm a-doing-of (or not), what would he think?  Hmm.