Aussie 4 August: Adelaide

As the Uniting Church’s ‘Church &…’ conference began with a rerun of last night’s Messy Church, hosted by the Lefevre team, we felt simply part of the team, which was perfect. Alas, I had been given the activity of the Smelly Plague Pots (rotten fish, old socks, blue cheese – you get the picture), so, far from having the chance to chat to people, I noticed they got as far from me as possible. At least I hope that was the reason.
I was doing keynote talks for the conference – something I feel very unconfident about as it always seems that if I know something, surely everybody knows it and I’m simply stating the obvious. But it helped to have the Messy Church DVD to bring in the experiences of other Messy Church leaders, and the stories from The Gospels Unplugged saved the delegates from boredom. Poor things: if anyone was hoping for an hour’s snooze, they would have been disappointed as there were encouragements to chat and share experiences every few minutes.
Melissa Cellier (below), Mary-Jo Zwar and Jo Lohmeyer had done a fantastic job of drawing together so many lay and ordained church leaders – poor Melissa has only been in post a few weeks, but breezed through it as if she’s been organising conferences all her life. We were picked up by Ruth-Mary Bond, the Fresh Expressions adviser for the area, and it was good to have the chance to chat with her.
Jenny and Greg Walker kindly invited us over for an evening meal, including a walk on the beach at Port Adelaide: a cheery relaxed evening of fab food and great conversation, with my son Arthur being adopted by Greg and Jenny’s 20-something two daughters to share the joys of the internet together. We ate far too much. It was smashing.