Greenbelt re-appeared back in my view in 1994. Since that initial conversion experience I’d been once (1989), and it had hovered in the back of my consciousness in the intervening years. I don’t remember how the 1994 trip happened, but I went off with Steve for the weekend, and had a great time. The general ethos of Greenbelt really clicked with me, and this felt like a community that was willing to push boundaries and explore.
This seemed to chime with where I was at. Becoming involved in preaching and worship leading had been great, but it meant putting my own faith under the microscope more and more. I was doing some lay-training, was reading around subjects, and whilst this was giving me material for sermons, it was also leaving me with an uneasy feelings – that things maybe weren’t so neatly packaged as I’d have liked, and that there were loose ends that I really didn’t want to start unraveling.
Part of this was probably prompted by a couple of trips to Taize in the late 80s / early 90s, which had done two things – opened my eyes to the validity of a broader Christian experience than the one that I was used to, and made me appreciate silence and simplicity in worship.
Anyway, I decided to go to Greenbelt again in 1995. And this turned out to be one of those pivotal points in my faith journey. Glancing through the programme, I noticed a series of talks with “The Post-Evangelical” label. Looking more closely, I was intrigued with the description of what was being presented, and decided to along and hear Dave Tomlinson, who was giving the talks. I knew nothing about Dave or his back-story at this point in time, but something about what was being described in the programme clicked with me. Well, for me, and for many others, the book that accompanied that series of talks (launched at that Greenbelt) was one that really opened eyes. Suddenly – or so it seemed – we were being given permission to ask all those awkward questions that we’d quashed to the back of our minds. The Post-Evangelical paints a picture of somebody who had been fully-immersed in the evangelical world, and yet who had found it ultimately unfulfilling. And who was now striking out beyond those narrow confines to recognise the vast breadth of experience, both ancient and modern, that was Christian. Yet (and this was – I think – the key factor that made it resonate with me) that experience was always coloured by that founding evangelical experience. This “new” experience was one that, almost by definition, was defined by what it was rejecting.
It was this permission that the book presented which, for me, brought to the surface all sorts of questions. No longer were these doubts and uncertainties things to be ashamed of and hide from. They were seen to be a valid striving and searching, something that would encourage growth and development, not something that would hinder it. This was new and exciting territory.
Of course, the destination when pursuing these questions may be a lot less certain than where I had been heading previously. And I think that was something that I didn’t appreciate until later. In hindsight, the implications of opening this Pandora’s box weren’t clear to me at the time. But once that lid was off, there was no chance of getting it back on again. There was no reverse gear on this journey (however much, in subsequent years, I might have wished for one).
Coming back into regular church life I had a new boldness. I realised that there was a broader church out there, and that the narrow experience that I’d grown up with was not the be-all and end-all. And I tried to incorporate that into what I did in preaching and worship leading – not being overtly challenging or difficult, but trying to broaden things out, introduce a broader palate. And most significantly, I think, becoming less interested in giving answers, and more interested in raising questions.
But through all of this I was still ultimately convinced that my task was – in some small way – to transform that small area of church that I was a part of. It was to take what I’d found, and somehow infuse the church with that spirit. I wasn’t turning my back on it. I genuinely wanted to change things, to make a difference. There was still a future to be had here.
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