I am a fairly reserved Anglican. I didn’t always know that about myself. Not long after I first became a Christian, I joined a large charismatic church, where I struggled with the endless repeated praise choruses, felt bemused about people putting their hands in the air and wondered what on earth the flags were for. I went for more than a year but I didn’t make any friends – with a congregation of over 500 it was hard to pick out familiar faces, or expect to be recognised. And yet, despite my discomfort, God did meet with me at that church. I was baptised there. More than I realised at the time, it shaped me. There is real value in going to churches where you might not be that comfortable. Thanks to my job I’ve since been to all manner of events and been exposed to teaching and theology that I wouldn’t have encountered had I stayed in my ‘tribe’, but even then, I sometimes don’t fight enough with that sense of ‘God is here with us, but he’s probably not with them.’ We concocted our church swap experiment (p30) to see what happens when people are exposed to ways of doing church which are different from their own. By and large, there was something at each service which made people think, challenged a preconception about a different style or even helped them encounter God in a new way. So next time you have a Sunday spare, why not pop in to that church you always drive past but suspect is dodgy? It’s not just good for unity, it might be good for your soul as well. You might be sick of Rob Bell by now. Or at least, you might be sick of talking about his book and whether or not he actually believes all will be saved. He’s on our cover this month because after all this talk about him, we wanted to give the man himself a chance to respond. As upbeat as his recent public appearances have been, I came away from our interview with the impression that he was somewhat bewildered, bruised and battered from the slating he’d received from the Christian community after the publication of Love Wins. As the body of Christ we should be ashamed of ourselves for forgetting that there is a difference between a person’s humanity and their theology. Let’s no longer contribute to the persecution of one individual who was brave enough to say in public what many Christians have wondered about in private (I know, because many of you have written in to tell me). Let Rob Bell have his say. Continue to wrestle with, argue about and take seriously the ideas he presents. But now, please, let’s leave the man alone.