Between January and May we hope prophetic hunches, helpful insights, and creative thinking will emerge, some of which might become reality as 40 baptists share their thoughts of the future of baptist life in Britain

After 400 years of Baptist presence in Britain there is much to celebrate. However as society changes faster than at any point within the previous 4 centuries we need to think creatively and daringly even about the coming 40 years of life within BUGB let alone the next 400. The desire of this initiative is to open up hope-filled, prayer-led conversations about Baptist life, mission and resourcing at local, associational and national levels, as we look beyond 400 years to the future of BUGB.

This sets out to be a positive discussion in the spirit of hopeful imagination which seeks to value our Baptist family in all its expressions, whilst at the same time not avoiding asking questions, hearing challenges and exploring new or possibly rediscovering old shapes of relating and resourcing. This then is both a revisiting of our Baptist story as well as a look forward to how that story could unfold in the future.
 
Practically, from January until May 2012, we have asked 40 diverse Baptist voices to share their thoughts and stimulate people in re-imagining what it means to be a Baptist people in a rapidly changing context.  This first phase will therefore be completed by the start of the Baptist Assembly which also celebrates the theme Beyond 400.

In parallel with the 40 voices we are inviting all in Baptist churches to contribute their ideas and articles to a further chanel on the website.

Each contribution will be an article of up to 700 words, a video of less than 5 minutes, or picture(s). Everyone in our Baptist family is encouraged to comment and discuss on the website.

This is about sharing and each article and comment is received and published by Beyond400 under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License unless stated otherwise, and this means anyone can freely reproduce it as long as this is done under the same licence and credit is given.

We hope to publish contributions as a printed book to enable non-internet access to the conversation before the Baptst Assembly in 2012.

We welcome your thoughts as we seek to make this a constructive and visionary initiative - This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Yours in His imagination, from 6 of the 40...

Peter Dominey     Juliet Kilpin          Andy Goodliff
Chris Duffett         Neil Brighton       Simon Jones