I have come back from St.Pete beach with a new bathing suit. They don't sell bathing suits in October in Virginia and I needed a new one. So I shopped at the beach duds store across the street from the hotel where 60 + Presbyterian pastors have been contemplating what Transformation means for the churches we serve. Transformation is a new buzz word for what church-types used to call "redevelopment." Sometimes dying churches can be redeveloped/transformed. Sometimes not. The congregation I serve knows that transformation is probably in the future--either that or slow death.
We were reminded by one of the conference speakers that in early Xn communities, baptism meant getting a new suit--going down in the water, stripping and coming back up in a new white robe. In the non-magesterial Reformation, the Anabaptists decided that their infant baptisms didn't fit anymore. They wanted a new suit, and so they practiced re(ana)-baptism. Some of the pastors at the conferenced joked that we should chuck out the membership every year and ask all the church members to re-up every year, re-take those baptismal vows every year. I have returned with a lot of new ideas.
I didn't model my new suit--still the same black one-piece appropriately modest for 55 year old woman, not slim. I just brought it back in the suitcase with the tags still on it. I haven't taken the plunge in it. I used the old Speedo swimsuit (one piece, black, non-descript) for the last time this morning in the Gulf of Mexico. I left it in the hotel.
