Tim's blog

At the SCM summer celebration and AGM in a few weeks time I’ll be standing down from the Publications portfolio and wrapping up my two years on General Council (GC). It has been an absolutely amazing two years that has given me a ton of great opportunities and I thought I’d say a little bit about it here so anyone who is thinking about running can get an idea of what being on general council is like.

My first experience of GC was a meeting the afternoon after the summer gathering in 2009 had finished. Due to having stayed up fairly late the previous night I was slightly sleepy and also struggling a little to grasp what was going on. We’ve now changed how GC meets so you won’t have to go through the same half-awake introduction as I did. Instead the first experience of being a GC member anyone who joins now will get will be the visioning weekend.

I’ve been on two visioning weekends and they both have been massive amounts of fun. You wouldn’t think a whole weekend devoted to training you how to be a trustee would be fun but they were. It’s also a weekend for you to help to get to know the rest of GC and have a bit of a laugh. By the end of the weekend I knew pretty much exactly what was going in GC meetings and a fairly good idea of how the organisation as whole functioned. Absolutely no prior knowledge of anything was required, which was a good thing since I was just finishing first year and I don’t think I had any. So here's what I've experienced as a GC member and what you can do to:

Here's a few more articles, picture and videos that have made me think, made me smile or made me laugh.

Ah term is over and at least in theory there's much more free time to be had. I've been using some of this time to surf the internet and here is some of the interesting things I've found which you might enjoy reading.

The Mission issue of Movement magazine should have now arrived at your door and we've now begun work on the next issue. The next issue will be the Freedom Issue and we want some of your art to go in it. Anything that you've done that you think relates to freedom: photos, paintings, drawings, poems, whatever. If we do think that your art is lovely and it makes its way into the magazine then you will get a free copy of the magazine and maybe even a prize for the best one! Send it all to editor@movement.org.uk.

It's been a couple of weeks since I've done one of these because of essays, exams and a busy Easter Holiday but here's a couple of articles I've read in the last few weeks.

The first part of the 2010 Greenbelt festival has been officially announced.

The big event this week which has many in the UK Christian community talking this week is an amendment to the Civil Partnerships act which allows same sex partnerships to be allowed on religious premises. The amendment is explained fully by Thinking Anglicans.

This may be the start of a new feature here at the SCM blog where I link to articles I've found in other places on the internet. If you see an article that you think SCMers would like to read or a site I should be checking then email me or post it in the comments. At the moment I'm heavily drawing from Ekklesia and Thinking Anglicans.

General Council has been considering having new SCM T shirts made but we wanted your input on the design. Rosie's made one design and it's got room for a quote or phrase on the back and we were wondering if anyone had any ideas for what they wanted to see go there.

Some possible ideas we've had for quotes are from the recent Movement magazine flyers:

“The time will shortly be upon us when the pursuit of contemplation becomes a strictly subversive activity.”
Daniel Berrigan, Movement issue 6, 1972

Hello all and Welcome to SCM's new blog.

This blog is a space for people to post their opinions, prayers, artwork and for us to share what is going on with SCM. We hope that there should be a couple of updates per week and that there is a wide range of discussion in the comment sections of the blogs. We are still looking for more people to regularly contribute to the blog so if you would like to take part in that message me through my profile.