Stephen, that is an entirely valid point and I accept that these nuances, though subtle, may both point to flaws in our thinking and help to perpetuate them. However, on reflection (I’m not sure I was aware of this at the time), I think that there are still good reasons for the more active form (‘become the presence of God’).

First, it retains a missional dynamic: we become the presence of God not for ourselves (though this is obviously important) but for others. Secondly, it seems to me that the church needs consciously to accept the responsibility of being the presence of God for others. We do not make God turn up in the way that we can make static electricity happen by rubbing a balloon against a sleeve and sticking it to a wall. But we have been given the Spirit of God, and I’m not sure it’s so wrong to suggest that by deliberately going somewhere as the community of believers (‘where two or three are gathered in my name…’) we actively bring the presence of God into that place.

I suppose also that this particular way of putting it highlights the fact that we are struggling to understand how to be the effective presence of God in the space outside the church - it reflects an awareness that we know how to be spiritual in private but not in public places. The more active form of expression arises because we are in learning mode, though I fully accept that as soon as we reduce it to a learned technique, we have lost the real presence of God.