Record of meeting, 7 October 2009

We met on 7 October at David Lambourn’s house. Present were David Belcher, John Challenor, Sara Clethero, Paul Graham, David Lambourn and Stephen Williams, with apologies from Stephen Cox, George Gregg and John Howard.

We spent most of the meeting reflecting on the Oxford conference “Reclaiming the Narratives of Faith” which several of us had attended. It was felt to have been a successful day although there was much about the content that was debatable so we ended up debating it!

We then want on to consider our future programme and organisation. We agreed that in general we wanted to stay with our present conversational format and David Lambourn is happy to go on hosting this for at least the next year. If we wanted the occasional larger event there would be facilities and possible partners in Birmingham. There was a suggestion that we might want some time to base our conversations on the experience and concerns of members of the group rather than always look outside to books or conferences for our starting points.

With regard to the convenorship, we agreed to let Stephen Williams stand down as soon as possible. David Belcher will take on responsibility for chairing and managing our meetings, and David Lambourn will deal with mailings and correspondence. For the time being, we will no longer keep a detailed note of each meeting.

Our next meeting, as previously arranged, will be on Wednesday 11 November at 1930 at David Lambourn’s house, 28 Frederick Road, Edgbaston. As planned, we’ll be discussing Don Cupitt’s latest book Jesus and Philosophy. Most of us at tonight’s meeting had already acquired and read it so if anyone wants to borrow a copy before 11 November, please get in touch.

The meeting after that will be on Thursday 17 December.