I’m at the BU Refresher conference – as are rather a number of other Baptist Bloggers, including Jim Gordon, Nick Lear, Geoff Colmer, new guy Chris Duffett and Julie Aylward. As usual here at The Hayes, we’re over-fed and under-exercised, but the teaching input has been great – excellent sessions from Jon Stannard, reminding us that pain is a necessary part of the ministry to which we’ve been called, and from Anna Robbins on cultural atheism and cultural nihilism. Can’t remember the last time that an extended quote from Nietsche featured in a meeting that I attended!

All the food – good though it is – got me to wondering. We see people on the streets on Friday and Saturday nights, wobbling around because they’ve drunk too much. Others suffer from eating disorders. Do Baptist ministers suffer from Binge Thinking? A few days away each year when we think and reflect like crazy, and then we come home, throw some of it up over our poor, suffering congregations, and then put the brain away for another few months, and get back to just doing the ordinary work.

If that seems familiar – and I suspect I’m guilty of it – then maybe I need to find a better way of consuming. Maybe I need to eat less, more regularly (“Amen!” shouts Mrs A. “Quiet dear – I’m being metaphorical!”)

Time to sleep off a few calories before the next session!