For the past 30 years or so, our church community has met in a school in SW London. It’s a large space – freezing cold in winter & boiling hot in summer – probably best known by most as the location of the closing scenes from the film ‘Love Actually’. But for good or for bad, it’s been our home.

Reflecting over these past few days on who or what has most shaped my understanding of reconciliation has been a challenge. I’ve enjoyed taking time to reflect & to remember encounters & experiences from over the years, and have kept being drawn back to a longing I’ve had for more years than I care to remember of a church with no walls.

I can easily recall standing in the middle of that very same school hall, only this time at the centre there was only the cross and somehow all the external walls had been taken down.  All that was left was this wonderfully open, limitless space where previously there had been very much this sense of those who were ‘inside’ and those who were ‘outside’.  Now there was just open space. No distinctions, no barriers, no lines of demarcation. Everyone was just free to just come and go. 

So many seem to have experienced hurt & pain at the hands of the church. Despite now ‘leading’ the church community I am part of, I too have experienced such hurt & pain.  Part of my wrestle with my experience of the church over so many years has been that, for some reason, definitions seem to be very important.  Boundaries seem to matter. Terms of reference that clarify ‘who you are’ and ‘who I am’ and ‘where you are’ and ‘where you are in relation to me’, for some reason, seem to matter.  For many, many years I have had a sense that what might matter more, is a church with no walls. 

My (constantly evolving) appreciation & understanding of the ‘church’ is that it is first & foremost about people. People from all walks of life, working & collaborating together, no matter what their denominational affiliations, to break down walls of injustice & of social, political and spiritual division. And instead, co-labouring to build something better – a more just and loving world for us all to live in.

What has most shaped my understanding of reconciliation has been a desire & a passion to find ways for those walls to come down.  To tear down the barriers that exist between us and instead explore ways in which I can become curious & inquisitive about the other, and allow the other to be curious & inquisitive about me.  Not trying to convince others of my way of thinking.  Not trying to align others to my theological or philosophical convictions.  Merely, irrespective of our differences, learning to see one another first & foremost as made in the image of God. 

And so, perhaps, that draughty school hall where all of this started for me is more poignant than ever I realised. Perhaps it is just about Love Actually!