Paul, those ‘be’ statements were not meant as a corrective to your remarks: they simply reflect our struggle to position ourselves where God wants us. In any case, your statement that ‘Much of the openness (of lack thereof) of moving the church gathering to parks and pubs must stem back to a person’s worldview and philosophy’ made it clear that you were not looking for a formula. I agree with this: a major shift in outlook is required, but what we are shifting to remains indistinct and difficult to communicate.

I’m glad you bring the question of worship into the frame - thanks for the blue renaissance links. There’s a lot of talk about emerging church but it also needs to be enacted – not least through worship. It’s not just in words but also in works, worship and community that we are trying to forge a new idiom, a new mode of discourse that will stretch across the gulf between the church and the world, that will create a new way of being in the void between the sacred and the secular.

We had an interesting experience in a pub in Soho, London, on Valentines’s Day last year. We had hired the bar but the place was already packed with people when we got there. We had a guy playing guitar and singing in the corner. He did some standard ballads, some more thought-provoking numbers, but I noticed half-way through the evening that he was singing worship songs, and they didn’t seem at all out of place. It’s that public presence thing again.