Yesterday we went to the National Media Museum in Bradford – an epic and excellent building with amazing exhibits for children and adults. One of the galleries that grabbed me had nothing in it but photographs of urban churches.
Taken in London between 2002 and 2006 photographer David Spero has documented some highly unusual christian centres.

I bought a book of these pictures, fascinated with what they symbolise. I quote, “These are buildings that feature none of the usual monumental architecture of the traditional church with its overt symbolism of status and power.

Temporary, semi-permanent and often un-consecrated, the churches are where we would least expect to find them. Located in industrial estates, shopping parades, houses, cinemas, above pubs and commercial properties they reveal a contingent architecture of buildings that were never designed to be places of worship.”

I love the whole idea of someone just planting a church above a hairdressers or in a cafe or a school! I also love some of the unlikely and incredibly unfriendly looking sites chosen for churches to be. If Jesus were here, he would want us to plant churches in areas of poverty and degradation.

On the back of his book it says: “Spero’s work acknowledges that the divine may exist in the most unlikely places and testifies to our enduring need to seek out a state of grace.”

I would argue with one word in that last sentence. The word MAY. Other than that, it had my full endorsement.
David Spero, I salute you for making me think.