Magical Case: Forum

I may be two days late, but I’m just about going to get this done before the weekend is over so I’m happy. I did say I was going to be doing these in roughly the order the images are in the gallery, but I’ve changed my mind somewhat on that. This is mostly because the first few sets of objects are all going to be pretty lengthy to talk about, and I desperately need to sleep right now!

So this week I’m going to talk about Forum, which as you can probably tell from the wristband is some kind of event. To be a little more precise, it’s a Bible week which happens in the summer, usually late August or early September. The week is run by UCCF (the body that oversees the work of Christian Unions around the country), and is aimed at CU leaders, primarily committee members but other team members and small group leaders are also catered for. It’s a national week and so it’s pretty full, which means that although it happens at the lovely Quinta which has nice accomodation, a lot of people who go have to camp.

Quinta is also the venue for the midlands new leaders training weekend, run in February for those CU members who are taking over as leaders (because that is the time of year when most CUs change their leadership). The wristbands are from the year when I was on the committee, so I had been to Quinta earlier in the year and it was a little odd coming back to a much bigger event at the same place. We went from meeting in one of the halls to meeting in a big tent that was set up in one of the fields.

Forum is a pretty awesome week of teaching and preparation for the year to come, and the year I went Terry Virgo was there giving a few of the talks in the main meetings. It was also an excellent time to spend together as a committee preparing for the next term, getting everything ready for freshers week and generally hanging out and having some fun! We actually skipped one of the seminar slots so that we could chat together about what was happening, we wondered down the road away from Quinta to find somewhere quiet and ended up sitting on the grass in the grounds of a small church.

On the whole is was an exciting week where a lot of fresh new ideas were thrown around, and without it I don’t know how we would have coped with freshers week! Forum is even more exciting for me now that I know I’ll be doing relay next year too, since I get to go again this summer! I’m really looking forward to seeing the new committee together getting things done, and that will be the first time when I will see them as a relay worker, which is equal parts exciting, scary and weird.

As a parting comment, wristbands are really gross.