On homophobia

I am not a homophobe - at least I don't think so.

Nobody chooses to be gay - at least I don't think they do - so why should I hate them - or think any less of them - because of it?

Even if homosexuality was a choice, my faith teaches me I should love everyone, regardless of the choices they make or whether or not I agree with them. Lots of people - gay and straight - do all sorts of things I don't agree with (heck, I do things myself that I don't agree with!), and I quite easily manage to not hate them for it!

For the record, I do freely admit that the thought of gay sex makes me feel uncomfortable. I don't think there is any reason why I should feel bad about that. I am not happy about heterosexual sex outside of loving committed relationships either, but the thought of it doesn't affect me in quite the same way. This is because, as a red-blooded heterosexual male with certain, faith-informed perspectives, straight casual sex does feel very wrong to me, but is also potentially very tempting!  Gay sex just feels wrong - for me personally there is no temptation involved! This doesn't make gay sex a worse "sin" though, it is just to acknowledge that my own personal reactions to it are different.

I also most definitely do not support discrimination against gay people, but I may have different ideas from some - especially those campaigning for the legalisation of gay marriage - about what exactly discriminating against someone actually means.

Peter Tatchell has recently called on Archbishop Justin Welby to, "apologise on behalf of the Church of England for the centuries of homophobic persecution it inflicted on gay people", which Welby has said he will think about. Tatchell has also said that, "Large swathes of the Anglican global communion actively support the persecution of LGBT people, mostly without rebuke". My knowledge of Anglican collusion in the suppression or persecution of LGBT people is virtually null, but I don't find this difficult to believe, and I sincerely hope the Archbishop does issue an apology and takes a stand on this.

However, I disagree with Peter Tatchell on the issue of gay marriage.

Tatchell says that Welby is homophobic because, "Homophobia has come to mean more than an irrational fear for gay people. It includes support for anti-gay discrimination and the denial of equal rights to people who are LGBT".  In other words, Tatchell is saying that Welby is "homophobic" because he opposes gay marriage.

I do not agree with the way Tatchell uses the word "discrimination", but I particularly resent this definition of the word "homophobia". Homophobia is an ugly word that no caring, socially responsible person wants to be associated with and using it in this way seems to me to be a clever, deliberate, and also extremely unfair campaigning tactic. Fear of this word massively closes down the debate, because anyone who doesn't want to risk being branded with it is now forced - at the very least - to keep their opinions to themselves.

I am not comfortable with gay sexual relationships - for reasons I don't have room to explore here - but I don't think they should be legally prevented. It follows therefore that I am in some ways less comfortable (but also in some ways more - not room to explain here!) with gay civil partnerships, but again, I don't think they should be legally prevented.

I am however very uncomfortable with - and opposed to - the legal redefinition of the word "marriage". To my mind, this is not so much about giving gay people extra rights, as it is about changing a nation's understanding of a crucial and fundamental ideal.

"Discrimination" is not always a dirty word - we do it all the time. I "discriminate" between dogs and cats because they are different. What would we do if dogs started campaigning for example, for the "equal right" to be called "cats"? Dogs and cats are equal, but they are not the same. Equality does not equal uniformity.

"Marriage" has always been defined as a lifelong commitment between a man and a woman. It has many benefits, which I obviously can't list all of here, but significantly these include the bringing together of 2 different sexes in a mystical union in which each complements the other for the benefit of the whole. This union does not just benefit the individuals concerned, it is also - at least potentially - the emotional and biological basis for a family. Apart from procreation - without which the human race would go extinct - it also creates an environment for the healthy nurture and development of new people. Both sexes play an important part in this as a child primarily bonds with first one and then the other during different stages of their psychological development.

Society's understanding of - and appreciation for - marriage, has eroded signficantly in the last few decades as individualism and the desire for self-fulfilment have become more prominent. High divorce rates and a significantly reduced level of faith in marriage have made this seem a much less attractive ideal, and therefore perhaps, one not so worth defending.

Personally though, I don't think society has ever needed marriage more than it does now, and redefining it in this way will only lead - harmfully I believe - to increased confusion as to its fundamental purpose and value.

I do not think this makes me a homophobe!

Things I don't understand about God

Usually, when writing posts on this blog, I do my best to sound wise and knowledgeable. If you're laughing as you read this, then I may not have succeeded! At the very least I generally try to sound like a Christian who thinks about stuff and has at least some idea what he's talking about.

Generally then, I don't tend to spend a lot of time talking about the things I know I don't understand. So I thought it might make a nice change if I did!

Like most Christians I have doubts. Sometimes I look at the world and I wonder: Is there really a God after all? Am I just fooling myself? Usually my conclusion is that there is and I'm not, but sometimes I feel firmer in that conviction than others and there are always some questions that remain unanswered. So here is one of them:

It seems to me that pretty much everything in nature - at least in the animal kingdom - is ultimately based on violence. Violence is used to determine leadership, territory and mating. If you're a carnivore then you have to be violent in order to survive. If you're a herbivore then you either need to be violent enough to resist your attackers, or have some other way of avoiding, escaping from or defending yourself against violence if you want to live for very long.

One of the central tenets of the Christian faith though, is that God is love. Indeed, this is one of my central reasons for believing in God. Love is the only thing that really gives meaning to life. Without love, life doesn't make sense. It makes sense to me therefore, that the creator of the Universe would have love as His very essence. It also makes sense to me that God would be personal - not just some sort of impersonal cosmic force - as love is personal by definition, not something that can exist on its own in some kind of cosmic vacuum.

So why would a God of love create a natural order that has violence so deeply written into it? I don't understand this. One popular explanation among some evangelical Christians is that this is a result of 'the fall' - meaning that when Adam and Eve rebelled against God, the whole of creation changed and that it wasn't like this before. But there are several problems with this.

It seems fairly clear to me that the world has been here for a few billion years, despite what the young earth creationists might have to say about it. The Biblical creation story doesn't read to me like an account that is intended to be taken entirely literally, and even if it was, it says very little about the state of nature before the fall. It makes sense to me that the relationship between humans and the world would have been negatively affected by the breakdown in relationship between man and God. It even makes sense to me for the world to have suffered as a result of this, in ways we don't fully understand. All the records we have though, suggest that violence has been very much a part of life on planet earth, for a long time before human beings appeared.

So this is a question I don't know the answer to - although it doesn't stop me from believing in God. I wonder what you think?

The Spirituality of Computer Programming

About 18 years ago I had an unusual experience.  I found myself crying - albeit fairly briefly - over a few lines of a small computer program.  I am not referring though, to cries of frustration in response to a particularly badly written piece of code.  I can't remember what the code was now, or even whether it was mine or somebody else's.  I seem to remember (although I'm not certain) that it was written in a language called Lisp.

In the Christian circles that I've found myself involved with over the last few years, there has been a lot of talk about the "sacred/secular divide".  This has to do with the fact that - particularly in Evangelical churches but probably in other Christian traditions as well - some parts of life are often treated - explicitly or implicitly - as more "holy" or "spiritual" than others.

So for example, going to Church, reading the Bible, or working for churches, charities or missionary organisations is often considered more worthwhile or significant than cleaning your teeth, watching television, being a good primary school teacher, or - indeed - writing computer programs!

This seems to be a little at odds with the Bible itself.  For example, Psalm 24 verse 1:

The earth is the Lord's and everything in it, the world and all who live in it.

Or  Colossians 3 verses 23-24:

Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for human masters, since you know that you will receive an inheritance from the Lord as a reward.

Or Philippians 4 verse 8:

Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things.

As well as being contradictory to the Bible, this artificial sacred/secular split also goes against common sense.   If God made the whole of the created order, including human beings with their skills, tastes and ingenuity, then it makes sense that the whole of life would be important to Him.  And if it's important to Him then it should also be important to me.

So - getting back to my original subject - what does God have to say about computer programming...?  I have to admit that the Bible is a little sketchy on this topic!  I'm not sure exactly why I got so tearful all those years ago over those few lines of computer code, but I was praying at the time and I did feel genuinely moved, and felt that God was moved by what I was seeing.

The best way I can think to make sense of this is that computing is a small but very significant part of mankind's technological development, and that technology was always part of God's intention for us.  It springs out of our God-given ingenuity, curiosity and creativity and is part of our call to rule over creation and fulfil it's potential.  It is up to us of course, whether we use these God-given skills wisely or not and ultimately, whether creation suffers or benefits from our stewardship.  God cares that we have these skills though, and He cares deeply about how we use and develop them, and what we do with them.

I have always felt passionate about computer programming - although I also feel slightly embarrassed to admit this "in print"!  I have a very logical mind, but I also have a fairly strong creative streak.  The existence of computers gives me a unique opportunity to combine these 2 things.  Because of computing, I can create something, purely out of logic, with no physical form, which nevertheless still somehow exists in a very precise and clearly defined way, is unique to me, and has an obvious and measurable impact on the real world!  Just a few decades ago, such a thing would have been completely unheard of.  I often feel as though I was born for such a time as this!

As well as having a practical use though, computer programs have something else that is common to anything we create, but which most non-programmers (and even some programmers) might be surprised by.  Computer programs have - or at least can have - beauty!  (the flip-side to this of course, is that they can be extremely ugly as well!).  I'm not just talking about the beauty of a well-designed web page or graphical user interface - although that's part of it of course - I'm talking about the code itself!

Computer code consists of logical solutions to problems.  But there are almost always a near infinite number of ways that any particular problem can be solved.  There are complicated ways and easy ways.  There are ugly ways - and yes, beautiful ways!  The word "beauty" isn't used that often by computer programmers when they talk about their code - instead the word "elegance" tends to be preferred instead.  An elegant piece of code is one that does what it's intended to do clearly, succinctly and efficiently and is - ideally - easy for others to understand and maintain.  But it has an aesthetic as well as a functional quality - it is pleasing to the developer, and to any other developer who sees it and has an eye for that sort of thing.

I have to admit that I sometimes struggle with the fact that I put so much effort into creating  beautiful things that are so rarely and seldom appreciated - or even understood!  Sure, users appreciate the outward form of my programs and are pleased with what they do (assuming I've done a good job) but hardly anyone fully appreciates what goes on underneath.  If I'm working as part of a team, which has a good quality control process in place, then parts of my code will be checked by other programmers occasionally to make sure I'm not doing anything stupid, but that's not quite the same thing.  Just occasionally I get to share my work with another programmer, who might be impressed by it, or a programmer who happens to read my code might appreciate what I've done and even mention it, but this is quite a rare thing.

It strikes me that a lot of creation itself seems to be like this.  Beauty is everywhere in all sorts of unexpected and inaccessible places and we continually seem to be discovering more of it.  It's almost like God didn't care that most of it would never be seen - although I'm sure He also delights in our continuing discovery of it.  It seems to me though, that God delights in beauty for its own sake - although, like my computer programs, most of it seems to have a functional purpose as well.  It's part of His creative nature, His joy, His exuberance.  He doesn't just create to perform a task, or for the sake of it.  Beauty, infuses everything He makes.

God saw all that he had made, and it was very good. And there was evening, and there was morning—the sixth day.     (Genesis 1 verse 31)

Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger

The title of this post is the title of a book by Ronald Sider. I read an old version of this book as a teenager and it had a profound - if disturbing - effect on me. A friend of mine has recently mentioned that he is currently reading the updated version and this has got me thinking about it again.

If you're hoping for a review of the book then I'm afraid you're going to be disappointed as I can no longer remember anything about the contents. I just remember how it made me feel afterwards and the kinds of thoughts it triggered in my mind - some of which I am still living with. Basically - partly as a consequence of this book, but perhaps not entirely - I now have the following script running in my head, which in the last 20-25 years I have been unable to resolve:

1. I obviously have more than my fair share of "stuff" - certainly on a global scale, although even in UK terms I'm pretty sure I'm above average.
2. There are loads of other people out there in the world who have so little "stuff" that it's a struggle - if not an impossibility sometimes - for them even to survive.
3. I haven't done anything to deserve it. OK, if I'd been a bit more lazy I would probably have less, but most of my success has been down to accidents of birth, ability and opportunity. There are lots of people out there living on the bread line (or below) who work a lot harder than I do!
4. The logical thing for me to do therefore, would be to get rid of a lot of my "stuff", only keep whatever I decide really is my "fair share", and give the rest to those who have nothing. OK, it wouldn't change the world overnight, but it would if we all did it and it has to start somewhere!
5. I don't want to! I could use my marriage as an excuse - and it's not a bad excuse, because I'm pretty sure my wife would have something to say about it if I suddenly decided to give away three quarters (or whatever) of everything we own! - but actually that doesn't really wash because the truth is I was just as unwilling to do this before I ever met my wife.
6. There are obviously lots of implications involved in giving most of my stuff away. Money, to a large extent equals choice. Without money I am far more restricted in terms of what I'm able to do, where I'm able to go and even to some extent, who I'm able to spend my time with. None of these implications are insurmountable though, they just involve very big adjustments. In many respects, these adjustments could turn out to be very positive in terms of forcing me to rethink what is really important about life. 

Basically, there seem to only be 2 possible ways of resolving this dilemma:

1. Convince myself that it's actually perfectly fine for me to keep most of what I "own" and just give away a relatively small amount of that as I do at the moment.

or

2. Actually do it! Work out what I genuinely do think is a "fair" amount to hold onto and give the rest away (but only with my wife's approval of course!). This would of course be a radical and probably very difficult lifestyle adjustment and would be extremely restricting in very many ways. I think I would find the curtailment of liberty the hardest thing to get used to. It would mean sacrificing a great deal of independence and consequently depending a lot more on God and on other people. In theory at least, I believe these to be very good things, but they are also extremely scary and seem to require a massive effort which I can avoid by simply not doing this!

So in the last 20-25 years I have completely failed to plump for either of these options and have consequently had to live with this dilemma!

What do you think about this question? How do you, or have you, managed to resolve it ... ?

Don't Let Your Understanding Get in the Way of Your Understanding

Christianity is for stupid people!

By that of course I mean that Christianity is for everyone, regardless of intellectual capacity.

As a moderately intellectual person myself though, I like to ask lots of questions and try very hard to reason things through. I have a high degree of confidence in my own reasoning skills which can cause me significant difficulties when I'm confronted by something I can't understand. This can make being a Christian quite difficult - because when it comes down to it I don't really understand my own faith! I like to pretend that I do and I can usually talk fairly intelligently about it in a way that sounds quite convincing to other people (or at least to some other people anyway!), but I always have a lot of questions in my own mind - sometimes nearer the surface than others - which I am not able to answer.

I have often noticed that happiness and/or goodness do not seem to correlate - at least not positively - with intellectual capacity. In fact, if a correlation was discovered, I wouldn't be at all surprised to find that it runs the other way! The cleverest people I meet and the wisest people I meet are completely different groups. Just occasionally there is some overlap between the two!

I think there are (at least) two different kinds of "understanding". There is a logical/analytical kind of understanding which can be extremely useful, but can also come to some very wrong conclusions, particularly if it strays outside of the narrow range of problems to which it is particularly suited. Then there is wisdom. Wisdom comes from experience, from making good decisions (and sometimes bad ones), and from an instinctive or intuitive grasp of what is good, right and meaningful - from a deep inner sense of what really matters in life.

But how do you get wisdom? The book of Job (in the Old Testament part of the Bible) has this to say:

There is a mine for silver
and a place where gold is refined.
Iron is taken from the earth,
and copper is smelted from ore.
...
But where can wisdom be found?
Where does understanding dwell?
No mortal comprehends its worth;
it cannot be found in the land of the living.
The deep says, “It is not in me”;
the sea says, “It is not with me”.
...
                        - Job chapter 28

And what is wisdom anyway? The book of Proverbs says this:

The beginning of wisdom is this: Get wisdom¹!

                        - Proverbs chapter 4 verse 5

A recursive definition if ever there was one!

Proverbs also says this though:

Does not wisdom call out?
Does not understanding raise her voice?
At the highest point along the way,
where the paths meet, she takes her stand;
beside the gate leading into the city,
at the entrance, she cries aloud:
...
                        - Proverbs chapter 8

So wisdom is both elusive and hard to find (according to Job) and shouting out in public to anyone who will listen (according to Proverbs). Both of these things are true - wisdom is sometimes best expressed through paradox! The logical mind doesn't like paradox and tries to resolve it. The wise heart knows how and when to accept it and hold both parts in tension.

I can't tell you where to find wisdom, but I can tell you that it is accessed primarily, not through the logical/analytical mind, but through the heart. Pascal spoke well when he said:

The heart has its reasons, that reason knows nothing of

Pascal also said:

It is the heart which experiences God, and not the reason.

And the quote from Job earlier goes on to say:

The fear² of the Lord — that is wisdom,
and to shun evil is understanding.

Understanding in the sense of "reason" is a good thing and should be encouraged, developed, listened to and taken seriously, but reason will only get you so far. Understanding in the sense of "wisdom" will take you to a deeper level - a level that will show you what reason is for and teach you what to do with it.

Wisdom should be informed by, but not clouded by reason - don't let your "understanding" get in the way of your "understanding"!

Life, Faith and Heuristics

The other morning I was lying in bed, thinking about heuristics. If you think that seems strange - well, I'm sorry but that's just what it's like in my head sometimes!

For those who don't know, a heuristic can be loosely defined as, "a rule of thumb". Most of us use heuristics all the time, usually without realising it.

For example, if you want to catch a ball, there are 2 ways you could go about it. You could take the computational approach, which you might use for example if you wanted to program a robot to do this.You could calculate the speed and trajectory of the ball, perhaps factoring in gravity and wind speed, work out precisely where it was going to land, and then make sure your hand was in the right place. Or, you could take a heuristic approach. This would be something along the lines of, "the ball is getting bigger very quickly - I need to move my hand back a bit", and keep adjusting until it lands.

Heuristics are useful because most of us don't have enough information most of the time to make perfectly calculated decisions (or fast or precise enough brains to do so if we did), so we constantly have to make best guesses based on what we do know. Our ability to make such guesses correctly (or at least optimally) is constantly refined through experience. If it wasn't for heuristics we would all suffer from "analysis paralysis" - we would spend so long trying to work out how to do something, or even what to do, that we would never actually get around to doing anything at all! The trade off though, is that sometimes we get it badly wrong! This is where science comes in.

For thousands of years, people have taken a heuristic approach to all sorts of things and come to all kinds of wrong conclusions. For example, based on the information available to them at the time, people concluded that the Earth was at the centre of the Universe and that the world was flat. Science on the other hand, takes a much more stringent approach, and sometimes comes to conclusions that seem quite alien to our heuristic-oriented brains. For example, through a rigorous process of scientific investigation, we now know that most of what we call "matter" is actually made up of empty space (!) - populated by tiny particles bound together by electromagnetic forces, which cause them to arrange themselves in various formations that appear to us as solid, liquid or gas^*.

For most of human history it seems, most people have believed in gods or in a God, but nowadays it seems, at least in certain corners of Western Civilisation, that this belief might be on the wane. The wave of scientific progress over the last couple of hundred years or so has overturned and/or thrown into question so many of our traditional assumptions and beliefs. It has also given us a much-heightened sense of confidence in our ultimate ability to solve all the fundamental problems and questions of the Universe. Science has taught us to be suspicious of our heuristic interpretations of reality and to distrust anything that cannot be rationally tested and proved. At the same time though, heuristics continue to be crucial to living our daily lives.

If you want to catch that ball for example, you're going to have to use a heuristic approach - you simply don't have sufficient knowledge or brain-processing-power to do otherwise. If you're considering a new job and want the best outcome for yourself and your family - you cannot work out what will happen in the future and will have to make the best guess you can with the information you have. If you ever want to be in a relationship with anyone, you're going to have to decide whether or not you can trust them - but there is no scientific or logical formula for this! Instead, based on the limited information you have, you are just going to have to decide whether or not to take the risk.

Faith is a heuristic approach to life, and it seems clear to me that in the past (and no doubt in the present) we have got some of it wrong. Faith needs to listen to science and to learn from it (although not necessarily from everything that is said by all of its practitioners!), but science also has a few things to learn from faith. Science will never be able to prove that there is no God, and good scientists - even those who are the most staunchly atheist - will usually admit to this when pushed. By the same token though, science will never be able to prove definitively that there is a God, if indeed He is omnipotent and does not wish to be "discovered" or "analysed" in this way.

For all its remarkable achievements, science is just a tool and remains limited in scope and application. There is so much in life and reality that we don't know, will never fully know, and could never fully analyse if we did. Therefore, although science can and does furnish us with valuable data to inform our decisison making process, most of the important things in life - including faith - must continue to be determined by heuristics.

A Different Kind of Church

My wife and I were recently invited to join "Revive" on one of their weekends away.

"Revive" are a Leeds-based group of Christians, who are not really sure whether they're a "church" or a Christian community. Some of them are also involved in another church in Leeds and some even moved away from Leeds years ago, but have kept in touch and still occasionally meet with the rest of the group. So in some ways Revive is more like an extended spiritual family than a "church" in the traditional sense.

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So what is a "church" anyway?

For most people, the word "church" probably conjures up images of old stone buildings - perhaps Catholic, Church of England or similar. If you are a Christian, or have hung around many Christians, you are probably aware that there are actually many different kinds of churches, but for the most part they probably still revolve around some sort of building and a meeting that happens there every Sunday morning, where perhaps there is a Bible reading or sermon and people sing Christian songs together. Nowadays there are some very modern, and much more dynamic, variations on this theme which are specifically intended to appeal to a younger, 21st century audience, but the same basic structure usually still remains.

For some years now, I've felt dissatisfied with this model of church and have searched for a more organic, community-based, relationship-centred way of doing things. That's not to say that relationships or community are missing from the traditional model, it's just that I want to be part of something that is primarily based on community and relationship, rather than on a particular structure or way of doing things.

Several years ago, in pursuit of this quest, I joined a church in Leeds called "Word of Life", which at the time was going through a process they called "deconstruction". Their aims seemed to be similar to mine - they wanted to get away from the standard model of church as an institution, and pursue the idea of church as a spontaneous, organic relational community instead. Unfortunately for me though, deconstruction went a little further than I had anticipated as all formal structures were intentionally dismantled. Meetings became fewer and further between and eventually stopped happening altogether. All the leaders stepped down, and since there was no-one left who was willing to take responsibility for anything, the community as a whole ceased - in any meaningful sense - to exist. Many of the relationships continued and some Word of Life members began to organise smaller gatherings with other groups of Christians. Previously, many Word of Life members had also met in smaller "home groups" during the week. My own home group continued, and still does, though to my knowledge it is the only one now, that still meets.

For the last few years then, I have been unattached to any "church", but still get involved in quite a bit of Christian stuff. I meet regularly with my home group and pray and chat things through with other Christian friends. I occasionally visit our local Anglican church, and have recently enjoyed attending a "School of Theology" course at St. George's. I also belong to the "Left Bank God Group", which tries to promote the Christian message in a non-threatening and accessible way through a local community and arts venue which some of us are involved with. In a way then, not being part of any particular "church" has made me feel much more a part of "church" in the wider sense - i.e. the church of everyone who knows and loves Jesus, whatever denomination or organisation they are in.

Regardless of all this though, I still sometimes miss being part of a close-knit Christian community which is larger than my home group, of like-or-similar-minded people who I can share with, learn from and learn with. This is why I have been so pleased recently to learn - and experience - a bit more about Revive.

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The venue for the weekend was Westwood Christian Centre in Slaithwaite. The main hall has comfortable seating for about 20 people, but probably the first thing you notice about it is the swing! Right in the middle of the room, surrounded by chairs, is a swing consisting of a wooden bar suspended by two ropes from the high ceiling. For me, it kind of summed up the spirit of the weekend - the "serious" business of worshipping God and learning together, but permeated throughout by a sense of fun, as any genuine prolonged encounter with God is and should be!

Revive are a pretty laid-back bunch of people and I immediately felt at home with them. I particularly enjoyed our Saturday morning worship session, which consisted of 20-30 people, including kids, with a couple of people playing guitars and a large assortment of random percussion instruments which were handed out to anyone who felt like joining in. The kids continued to run around and play while the rest of us got on with worshipping God in whatever way we felt comfortable. I love that feeling of being able to really relax and be yourself in the presence of God!

After this, a recent member of Revive who grew up in the Dutch Reformed Church in Canada, shared how this had helped her develop an attitude to Christian discipleship which encompasses the whole of life and creation. After dinner, the leader of the group shared some thoughts about social media, the potential this has for changing the way we do church and the effects - positive and negative - it can have on community and relationships. In the evening we tried a creative/imaginative prayer exercise in small groups, which was surprisingly helpful for me in preparation for my new job. Most of the rest of the weekend was spent just hanging out and included a depressingly wet walk along a canal on Sunday morning, but in good company nevertheless!

I've shared all this just to give a feeling of what a community like this can be like. Revive do other things besides this weekend and are still trying to work out what they are exactly and what they want to do together. I like the way Revive continue to evolve in response to their members' needs and to the role they feel they should be playing in the world around them. They don't seem to be precious about structure or "success" for their own sake. As a relative outsider I feel I'm welcome to take part as much or as little as I want and many other Revive members - like me - have commitments to other Christian groups as well. This does present some logistical challenges but I like the way it mixes things up so that Christians from different groups can overlap, learn from one other, and deepen their sense of belonging to the wider "body of Christ".

I would like to see more communities like this in Leeds - focusing on what they are good at, overlapping and sharing resources with others and learning to be "church" together - instead of separate groups all trying individually to be the "church" and to provide their members and surrounding communities with everything they need, whilst duplicating effort, wasting resources and competing with one another in the process.