Dared to move? Take Two

Well, I'd say that the post from my phone (however short, full of the ubiquitous [yes, I did just want to fit that word in] predictive text fails and generally unhelpful) was successful! Must remember that for my move to Germany next week. (That's quite scary)

Anyway, I promised a Conference Blog, and so here it is.

We (my Synod Secretary [SynSec], his wife and I) got to Conference on Friday, 1st July. We took a quick walk over the Methodist Women in Britain (MWiB) event which was good fun, especially as we got cake! Met up with Rach before leaving and meeting Matt, and eventually other young people including John, Grace and Christy-Anna, the (now ex-) Methodist Youth President.

For those who don't know, Conference is an annual meeting of Methodists to make decisions and debate things across the Connexion (/country). It is never closed, only adjourned, so Conference could be called back at any time during the year. Conference's decision is weighty, as once Conference has decided something this becomes an official view of the Methodist Church (once it has gone through the appropriate and necessary time delays).

This year, a lot of debating focussed on the Big Society, Poverty and Inequality, Reaffirmation of Baptism (which I didn't really think had enough time), and also some good stuff about Schools (which was more in a parallel session, but still raised some good questions/points). All of the main Conference debates can be found on the website, starting from the beginning, here. Throughout Conference the Twitter engagement was amazing - I was sat next to my Chair of District (think Bishop equivalent) and he kept asking what people were saying! DigiMission's general Twitter Infographic and blog make for very interesting and encouraging reading, and can describe the amazing reception of Twitter much better than I can, so I'm not even going to try.

Something that I was listening to before Conference, and particularly brought to mind by Conference, was the Switchfoot song "Dare you to move". I would love the Church to take this as a direct challenge and call to action - a real "get up and go" shout that shows the world that even if they think we're dead and/or dying, there's a last breath in us yet!

Bruce Thompson, the new Chair of District for Lincoln and Grimsby, gave a fantastic call to social responsibility last Sunday. I must admit that I got so caught up in what he was saying I can't remember exactly what he said, but I do remember that I liked it a lot. It was all about our ability to respond. As a Church, what is our ability to respond like? How often do we actually test these abilities - stretch them, prove them? Maybe we should do things like that more often.

Dare you to move:

Welcome to the planet: welcome to existence. Everyone's here. Everyone's here. Everybody's watching you now; everybody waits for you now. What happens next? What happens next?

I dare you to move. I dare you to move. I dare you to lift yourself up off the floor. I dare you to move. I dare you to move like today never happened. Today never happened before.

Welcome to the fallout: welcome to resistance. The tension is here. Tension is here: between who you are and who you could be; between how it is and how it should be.

I dare you to move. I dare you to move. I dare you to lift yourself up off the floor. I dare you to move. I dare you to move like today never happened. Today never happened before.

Maybe redemption has stories to tell - maybe forgiveness is right where you fell. Where can you run to escape from yourself? Where you gonna go? Where you gonna go?

Salvation is here.

I dare you to move. I dare you to move. I dare you to lift yourself up off the floor. I dare you to move. I dare you to move like today never happened. Today never happened before. Today never happened. Today never happened before.