Categories: uncategorized
Date: 03 August 2005 09:03:33
Baptist Times site has some decent photos of BWC on.
There were a variety of people, organisations, ideas and things that I connected (or in some cases re-connected) with during the 5 days. Some of these connections will be specific to that time and context and become memories on that basis whilst some (particularly ideas) may be connections from the present to the future. Whatever they were here is flavour:
I was not an island at the conference, (well you can't be in the mist of 12,000 plus people). I travelled up with some women from our church and met other friends up there. Also I bumped into a number of friends of friends in different situations, (particularly around lunch time - can really recommend Rococo as a wonderful, well priced place to eat). At the young adults seminar I went to was able to put a face to Tall Skinny Kiwi aswell as bumping into a couple of other faces I knew to say hi to.
The other element of connecting with people involved really interesting conversations with random people from around the globe who shared their culture. Many of them, particularly from the Southern Hemisphere, had just arrived in faith because they wanted to connect and that was awe inspiring.
There was a cool resources area where I got freaked by a guy who had put my name on the original mailing list of a charity (6 years ago) and so worked out who I was even though I'd never met him! Actually it was good to (re)connect and find out where the project ruth charity is now.
Ideas that I kinda connected with were the idea of holistic approaches to evangalism, although I still have a problem with the term evangelism as it implies selling Jesus to people so they can gain a golden ticket, in my mind, rather than helping people connect with and recognise the triune God who is already with them (including the Jesus strand). I suppose the previous posts on empowerment and challenge are more informative about the ideas I connected with.
Finally I connected with culture through the arts, both secular and faith based. The people I were staying with were community arts types and so I connected with their projects. At the conference I was able to enjoy and experience (often for the first time) traditional dance from Georgia (Europe) which was cool, although couldn't work out if they had hats or fright wigs on, together with classical / traditional music from around a number other parts of the globe, gospel music from a range of choirs, particularly one from Norway who all looked like they should have been in a Gap advert and were really good. The Koreans were playing really interesting instruments which would have been part of the sitar / harp type family I guess and wore lovely clothes (just like in The King and I). At the end the choirs all came together to do the Halleluiah Chorus, which looked impressive and from the fact everybody else was standing up and looking in awe I guess must have sounded like something special aswell (unfortunately I just didn't get it and so was a bit bemused about what all the buzz was about).