faith and stuff was set up by people who believe that Christianity offers the most persuasive explanations to the big questions of life.  That's not to say that Christians always do a particularly good job of explaining it, of course.  And nor does the church always do a great job of living it out.  We hope to do our bit to help everyone do a little better.

This site is not designed for ranting against traditional church, nor for suggesting that we're better, or we've got it right.  Whatever is the absolute truth, one thing's for sure - none of us has an absolute grasp of it.  This shouldn't stop us trying, and seeking, and sharing our understandings, but we should always do so in a spirit of humility and openness to change, recognising that there's something provisional about what we know and believe right now.  The more we learn, the more we realise there is to learn.  

Just because no-one knows everything, of course, doesn't mean everyone knows nothing.  Just because our current Christian understanding may not be able to answer all the deep questions doesn't mean it has answers to none of them. 

For all of us, 'faith' is what cuts in when we reach the place where the facts and the certainty have run out, but we still have to decide which direction to go in, with only what our heart is telling us to use as a guide.

Just as life itself is a journey, so too, is faith.  Whoever we are - believer, agnostic, atheist - we are following a 'version of faith' on the journey we're on, because we're taking actions, making decisions, affecting others, and shaping our life, in accordance with what we believe (or don't believe). 

We, personally, place our own faith in what we understand as the Christian explanation.  To us, if there were to be a God - one who created everything there is, loves his creation and is deeply committed to humanity - then the God whose portrait is sketched in the pages of the Bible is pretty much exactly what we think that God would be like.  The clincher, for us, is Jesus.  Understanding who he was, what he did, why he did it, and the implications for us, is the key to the Christian faith named after him.  Jesus is the pivotal moment in one continuous big story of God, creation and humanity which begins with the Old Testament narrative.  

We're not keen on spending time categorising people on the basis of whether they are 'in' or 'out' of the Christian faith, because defining boundaries is never that easy.  People are not Christians because they know certain things (St. Peter will not be standing at the Pearly Gates with a questionnaire, to see if those requesting entry can recite the correct Christian facts) or because they've done certain things (such as 'prayed the sinner's prayer').  Christianity is, for us, a centred-set rather than bounded-set category.  In other words, defined by how close you are to the centre, not whether you are inside or outside of some supposed boundary.

That doesn't mean that 'everybody's in', of course, nor that there aren't lines that need crossing.  Every journey has to begin.  Every relationship has to start.  We can't say we have a relationship with someone to whom we've never been introduced, or to whom we've never spoken, or with whom we need to be reconciled.

If we look in a mirror and ask what God (if God exists) would want us to be like, most of us would probably agree we don't match up that well.  Most of us realise that there's a lot about humanity that ought to be different, so it would be no surprise to find that's how God saw things too.  And no surprise that he might want to start the process of changing the world by changing me.

People are Christians if they are in a living, day-to-day relationship with God through Christ.  The story of the Bible helps us understand what that means, and how we begin.  The Holy Spirit helps us to live in that relationship and to be changed, little by little, into God's kind of person.

Christians' reference point is to want to live and to be the way God intended us to be, as best we understand that.  The idea of 'righteousness' is simply 'being in right relationships', which Jesus has made possible: with God, with each other and with the world he created.

Christians are people who love God.  What does that mean?  How do we love someone we can't see?  It includes loving people, who we can see.  It includes loving the things that God loves (and hating the things that he hates, such as evil in the world).  And it includes turning away from being part of the human problem to be part of the divine solution.    

We do it by getting together with others who are also trying to love God and each other - sharing life together, its joys and sorrows, relating to this God together, and encouraging one another.  And by showing to those both 'inside' and 'outside' of Christian faith the very same amazing love that God has poured out to us - the God whose favourite self-description is love and whose favourite metaphor for himself is Father.

And, we do it by being willing to change - by co-operating with God in making us the person God wants us to be.

Most importantly, this is not merely an intellectual exercise.  This God of the Bible offers, through Christ, that we may know him intimately and personally.  Offers to be with us always, never to leave us, forever to be there for us.  A day-to-day parent, friend, comforter and guide.

We are still working at understanding everything for ourselves and, as we learn, trying to explain it in ways that make sense for other people too.  Both the process of 'becoming' a Christian, and the experience of 'being' a Christian, involve an ongoing journey, of moving from where we are towards a different centre.

This website wants to help us share those journeys together.