Baptist Steering Group - October 2019

We were reminded today that meeting via Skype has its advantages!  Not only does it provide the capacity for people to easily join the meeting for part of the agenda, it also tends to encourage Baptist Steering Group (BSG) to be more disciplined in expressing views and carefully listening to others!

We always end our meetings by inviting our Accompanier to share their insights and reflections about our gathering.  On this occasion Ken Benjamin picked up on the imagery of a sat nav which had been referred to earlier in our meeting.  He reminded us that, just as when we need a sat nav, sometimes we have to acknowledge that we wouldn’t start from here! Nevertheless, we have to live in the real world and get going, even if that involves a less than perfect route, and then allow the sat nav to review the various options as the journey unfolds.  Ken pointed us back to using our values as a good tool to help us review en-route and plot our journey going forward.

In the September BSG Key Communications, I shared how we made a definite step forward in our reflections about our patterns of relating across Baptists Together and particularly the role and composition of BSG.  When we met then we began to think more intentionally about the ways in which we relate as “movement” in informal, relational collaboration, and the ways that we relate as “charitable organisations” in formal, defined co-operation.  I was tasked to take everyone’s input and work out what this approach might look like in practice.  So, we gave a good chunk of this meeting to working through a more detailed paper; complete with diagrams!  This is where the imagery of the sat nav came in.  We used the analogy to help us identify who serves as the driver (setting the overall direction), who serves as the sat nav (working out the detailed route and thinking through unfolding challenges along the way) and who serves as the vehicle (physically getting us from a to b).  There remains a sense that this could offer us a good way forward; not a perfect solution but a less imperfect way of relating than we have now.  In the light of the discussions and feedback from today, I shall be refining a paper to enable Council to engage in a further discussion in November.

David Mayne, our Moderator of Baptist Union Council, was able to join us to finalise the agenda for our up coming Council Meeting.  As well as thinking about the ways we relate as Baptists Together, a key topic for Council in November will be exploring how we can increase our numbers of ministers/pioneers in training and looking at creative ways to help fund their formation.

Following a recent Association visit by Lynn Green and Phil Barnard, we also spent some time talking about how the wider Baptist family can encourage, offer insight and support those Associations that will be facing seasons of transition in the next few years.

Guided by input from our Baptists Together Mission Forum, BSG considered and agreed in principle a proposal to continue pioneer co-ordination across Baptists Together.  We were clear in our commitment to supporting and encouraging pioneering and hope to see more pioneering blessed, released, networked and encouraged.

Lynn Green
October 2019
The Revd Lynn Green is General Secretary of our Baptist Union
 
Baptist Steering Group offers collaborative leadership through co-ordinating the effective development and implementation of the broad strategy discerned by Council.


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