Hi! I'm John, an unremarkable person with no claims to fame.  I'm now 80 and for the first 70 years of my life I would have described myself as a conventional Christian attending the Church of England. Its liturgy was part of my life's wallpaper. At my age one tends to resist change but about 10 years ago I attended an Alpha course.  I had a growing sense of unease.  Nothing was actually new to me but I put myself in the place of someone facing it for the first time and realised something was wrong.          My spiritual journey took on a new phase and I lay before you the result of much thought, study, analysis and prayer.  Throughout I have had the strong sense that God was pushing me. If you have any comments  email me -

      I realised that what Jesus taught must have been simple enough to leave in the hands of uneducated fishermen and the like. What the Church teaches is much more complicated - why?  I concluded that what Jesus taught is as powerful and appealing as it always was while the Church's own doctrine has not aged well.  For the Church to have a future it needs to actually do what it claims to do - promote the teaching of Jesus.  At the moment Jesus - our star player - is left on the "subs bench" while emphasis is put on the Church's own Doctrine.   

      People are turning away from the Church.   In management consultant-speak the Church is seen as a "product" which is not "selling" as well as it used to. New ways of presentation and a reshuffle of resources are seen as the answer and the sticking point seen as a reluctance on the part of the congregation to accept change.

       "The Church" however is not the "product" it is "the delivery system".  Its function is to bring people to know God and to promote the teaching of Jesus.  The Church is failing God and no one seems to be considering the possibility that there is something fundamentally wrong with the Church and it is this possibility which has had my attention. 

          For most of its history the Church could burn people at the stake if they questioned its teaching - the last person executed by the Church in Europe for heresy was only 200 years ago.   In my youth in the 1950s and 1960s the Church was protected by social taboo and ignorance.   It wasn't acceptable to criticise or question the Church.  Most people in England, when asked, would put "Church of England" as their religion and would have their babies baptised even if they were not regular church goers.  The Social taboos weakened in the 1970s - remember Dave Allen?  Finally the internet came and not only could opinions be freely shared, information was just a click away.  It is now acceptable on the BBC for someone to suggest that the idea of God is superstitious nonsense.

Problem No 1 - For the first time in its history the Church has lost its protection and has to operate in totally uncharted waters. It appears not to have noticed. The Archbishop of Canterbury recently blamed the 30% decline of congregations since he came into office on God - “I am not sure I know what else could have been done. Because in the end the future of the Church and its survival or otherwise does not depend on Archbishops; it depends on God and the providence of God”.  Local to me there is an initiative which indicates the same mind set which says the Church is what it is and cannot change. New ways of presentation and redistribution of resources being the only options. Today there is absolutely no reason why someone not brought up in the Church should be in awe of the Church or accept its doctrine without justification and my conclusion is the Church cannot justify what it teaches in terms of either what Jesus taught or in terms of what makes reasonable sense.  My approach has been to put myself in the place of someone who has never been to Church and to ask the questions I would ask.

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