In hommage to the flip chart and white board

Now everyone knows you can't have an ecumenical meeting without a supply of marker pens and something to write on. (Can't resist another translation aside sorry, the translation of flip chart into French is "le paperboard"!!) This is not because we want to emulate the monks of old and copy things out long hand but it's a telling sign that words and papers are not always enough, sometimes we need to be able to express things rather differently - even if it is as here, just in listing themes for group work.

However I'm really writing this post because I do sometimes think that we need to put as much effort into thinking about the methodology of our meetings as we do into writing the papers we give. This is a general point after 5 years at the WCC and not a criticism of the present meetings. And I speak as someone who really likes listening to a well written academic paper being given - sad aren't I! Paulo Freire tried to teach us years ago that pedagogy and theology need to be intimately linked. Sometimes I think none of our churches have really understood this would improve their communication with one another and with the wider world. Sorry, late night rant over.

Anyway at the meeting on conversion the groups did meet but we didn't have quite enough time on the final morning for refining the reports and there will now need to be quite a lot of post-meeting redrafting and editing before we can move forwards with the weaving of the code of conduct.