My wife and I got to know Christian Associates, as it then was, in the early 1990s when we were living just round the corner from where Crossroads Amsterdam was meeting. Belinda was working for Shell, and I was doing a biblical studies PhD at the Free University of Amsterdam. Crossroads was a breath of fresh air.
We caught up with the organisation again a few years later—or they caught up with us—when we moved back from Oman to the UK and became part of an innovative church-planting team in South London. We then moved to the Netherlands and got involved with Crossroads The Hague, which we loved. That was followed by a couple of years in Dubai, before coming back to London.
I am now part of the leadership of a small but brilliantly missional church in Westbourne Grove. I have been doing quite a bit of writing and teaching, and I have had a continuing role in Communitas as a theologian and writer of Pooh stories for the annual staff conference fun night (someone has to do it). Over the last 15 years or more our “Thinklings” theological gatherings have made a significant contribution to the thought and practice of the mission.
I now have the role of UK Advancement Leader, which means that I am looking for ways to extend Communitas’ presence in the UK and Ireland. That’s not easy in Covid times, but it has at least given us the chance to slow down and reflect on what lies ahead for the church in Western Europe. We are seizing the opportunity to learn from scripture and the Spirit what it means to follow Jesus in a rapidly changing and increasingly stressed secular world.