About Alan

If I were you, I’d want to know something about the person who’s behind this. So here’s a bit about me.

I grew up with two gifts: I knew I was different from other people, and I knew that those differences were good. I liked being different, and I never really understood why anyone would want to be like everyone else, when our differences from each other make us who we are.

I also grew up with God. You can put a different name on God if you want, but God’s presence is part of my experience and I haven’t been able to convince myself that everything I experienced was just a coincidence.

So I found myself believing that our differences were good, and that good things came from God. So our differences come from God. Easy enough to say, but I found lots of churches that wanted people to be like them. I thought a church should be a place where each person could explore all the uniqueness and difference that God gave them, and learn from each others differences. I didn’t find any churches like that.

That’s what got me here. I want to be part of a community of people who listen to each other, who teach each other that they are important, who learn from each other. That’s a pretty hard thing to find. You might even say it’s not natural–and I’d agree with you. Our human nature seems to push us to block out people who are different, to quit listening, to stay safe…but I believe there’s more to us than what we see in human nature. So I’m trying this experiment, forming a new kind of community.