So there she was, a small woman, a lawyer, sitting behind an enormous desk piled high with manila folders. Each one charting the whereabouts of husbands, brothers, sons who had disappeared off the streets of El Salvador during its years of tyranny. With eyes that sparkled when she spoke she told us of the problems getting justice for people in a system where the army behaved with impunity. We had already passed the long queue of people waiting to see her, bringing yet more names, more stories, more despair. And there she was, running the Archdiocese of San Salvador’s Human Rights office, day in day out, terrier like in her conviction. Facing death threats herself, we asked the question ‘Tell us, do you have the support of the church in what you’re doing?’ A moment passed and through a steely gaze she replied, ‘I am the church.’

That’s my church.

Living in a neighbourhood wracked with tension and violence at the mercy of rival gangs, a mother looked on as two groups began to square up to each other outside her house. Asking God and herself what she could do right here, right now, the bell went on her oven. The cakes were ready. Piling them on to a cooling rack she opened the door and walked into the middle of the young people gathered. ‘You know, I’ve just made these. Do you think they’re any good?’ Confused looks, half smiles and an empty cooling rack later, the young men and women stopped to chat and then melted away.

That’s my church.

Gathered with a group from church who wanted to read a book together, we looked at Rick Warren’s ‘Purpose Driven Church.’ A gathering of people, not over confident nor theologically trained, took the book apart.  A community of theologians was born.

That’s my church.