In Matthew 13 verse 33 Jesus says “The Kingdom of heaven is like leaven (yeast), which a woman took and hid in three measures of meal till it was all leavened.”  The nature of the Kingdom therefore is to be hidden in this world until it has brought the change that society (the dough) so desperately needs; a transformation into something alive; a new culture.  As churches then, our expression of the Kingdom should be that (within the resources that God has given us) this societal transformation should be taking place at every point of contact.  This is the story of how one man encountered the yeasty Kingdom of God.

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Mission in our own community can be hard, especially in a nation like ours. It can be easy to think that mission is something you do in another country, that problems that matter to God – and should matter to us – like homelessness, a lack of food and poverty, is something that happens somewhere else.

Despite our country’s economic problems, the UK is still one of the wealthiest nations in the world – and it’s easy to dismiss these kind of problems, think they are too big for us and that they aren’t anywhere near our doorstep.

However, the reality is somewhat different.

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The Big Read started off as an initiative in the North East of England in 2009 as Christians from all denominations started reading the gospel of Luke together in local groups. This grew over the last few years and the project is in the middle of #BigRead13. Today, I am pleased to re-publish an interview I did last year with, @drbexl who spends some of her time working on the Big Read.

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