Sorry no photos

I forgot to take any photos, so just text on this post.

This weekend just gone was the Diocesan Assembly, a get together of around 400 people from the Diocese of Worcester - some clergy, others not and a mixture of ages, though there were probably more grey heads than any other colour!

The weekend was a coming together to think about what makes a healthy church. The key theme that seemed to be highlighted was about inclusion. How inclusive is our church? One of the speakers talked about a time when she lived as a homeless person. The welcome she got in the churches she visited that way was very different from the welcome she got when she visited in her usual role. She's the churches' bishop!!!

For me, inclusion raises questions about transformation. If someone (whether a homeless person or a bishop) is "included" in a church then who needs to change? The person? The Church? Both? What causes the change? Are there limits to the change? Can the person become unrecognizable from who they were before? Or can the church become unrecognizable? Can a church become so changed that it is no longer a church?

So unanswerable questions, but the real joys of the weekend was meeting people - building relationships with people I'd met before and meeting new people, and some of the worship - particularly the calmness of morning prayer.

But the real highlight is the story told by a colleague of separating two dogs that were fighting, but that's not appropriate for publication.