this is no longer a shocking headline but church isn’t working for a ton of people in the uk. any statistics on church attendance show that lots of people have left. whilst it used to be assumed that those people had ‘backslidden’ or given up on faith, it’s increasingly recognised that actually faith is very much alive for those people.

in new zealand spirited exchanges was set up by jenny mcintosh and alan jamieson in response to this realisation (following the findings of alan’s churchless faith research). spirited exchanges simply made available resources for people on that journey or in that space, and created environments in which people could talk honestly and process their stuff, as well as trying to flag up to churches what the issues were for people who were leaving (where they had ears to hear it).

jenny spoke at greenbelt a few years ago (2005). a few of us in the uk met with jenny in 2005 and spirited exchanges uk was born. it’s ticked along, led seminars at greenbelt and had a small database and web site, and facilitated a a few groups. the exciting news is that it’s about to go up a few gears. jenny macintosh has come over from new zealand to help develop it here. this really is an astonishing gift to the uk. jenny will be at greenbelt this year and have a stand in g-source. hopefully there will be a couple of seminars in the programme as well. we had a meeting in manchester on friday to dream a little about the way forward…

if this grabs you (you have left church or have a passion for those who are in that space) we could do with a few more people involved in the co-ordinating group. and we want to raise some funds to help develop this work. i’ll blog about this again once we’re a bit more organised. but if you have access to anyone/grant making trusts that might be interested in supporting this kind of work then do let me know…