However, there was a sense of engaging with reality for probably the first time in my experience. There were a number of stories that linked to the District Straight jacket for Mission http://www.lancashiremethodist.org.uk/library/TLCPolicyfinalcopy16.8.10.pdf that were actually encouraging and inspiring and when totted up it is clear that there is lots of good stuff going on in the District that is engaging people in different ways so that's good.
After coffee we entered into discussions around abuse of clergy when they seek to be agents of change and how the church needs to respond to this, and then a personal hobby-horse of mine - the issue of how our church deals with baptism, especially now we are have realised and admitted that we are responding to a post-christian age rather than just hope that all those who tick the 'Christian' box on the census form really mean what we mean. Without going into details, for the first time there seemed to be a sense of collegiate - a desire to be 'in this together' - whatever 'this' may be and a desire even to put dogma and theology aside in order to respond to the missionary agenda. Long may it continue.
Despite all this above, my afternoon visit to the dentist (dentist and synod in 1 day - penance or what?) was actually briefer, less stressful and tiring, contained less waffle, and actually rated higher in my experiential rating system for the day. Dentist 7, Synod 6.5.
