Harbour Faith Community

10/06/2026

Lets Take A Breath.

A few of us from Harbour will be gathering in the church this evening (10th June) from 7pm to 7.30pm for a simple, quiet moment of reflection, solidarity, and hope.

There will be no speeches and no agenda. Just a held space for anyone who wants to sit quietly, breathe, pray, lament, light a candle, or simply be with others for a while.

If that would be helpful to you tonight, feel free to drop in and sit with us even for a moment.

And if anyone locally is feeling anxious, unsafe, or alone tonight, you are welcome to message us privately. We’ll help where we can.

In love, solidarity, and hope.

10/06/2026

FIREBREAK

Like everyone else, we are horrified by the brutal knife attack in north Belfast on Monday night. Our thoughts are with the injured man, his loved ones, and all who stepped in to help him.

There must be justice. There must be truth. There must be space for the police and courts to do their work.

But what has happened since is also deeply disturbing.

A terrible act of violence has been hijacked and weaponised into suspicion, fear, racism, intimidation, arson, and attacks on people who had nothing whatsoever to do with the original crime.

This is how fear always works, and we must resist it. It spreads like indifferent wildfire and jumps from person to person, post to post, meme to meme, street to street. It tries to convince us that a whole community must pay for one person’s crime.

The people who intervened during Monday night’s attack showed one kind of courage: they moved toward danger to protect another human being.

Now the rest of us are being asked to show another kind of moral courage: to become, each of us, an individual firebreak.

A firebreak is not dramatic. It does not make speeches or seek attention. It just stops the flames from spreading beyond itself — calmly denying the fire the oxygen it craves.

So, for those asking, “What can we do?” we invite you to become the firebreak.

Check on your neighbours, especially those who may be frightened.

Support local businesses that are being targeted.

Do not forward rumours, protest instructions, fake road closures, or calls for businesses to shut.

Refuse to let social media accounts, many of them with no love for this place, turn our communities against each other.

Above all, remember that the person beside you is not a statistic, a demographic, a threat, or an “issue.” They are your neighbour, and you are theirs.

Yes, fear and violence are contagious, and we’ve all seen that old movie before. But fear is not the only thing that spreads. Courage can spread. Love can spread. Truth can spread. Kindness can spread.

You may feel powerless in this particular moment, but you have more to offer than you realise. Just don’t take the bait of fear, and let love rise in whatever small way it will.

02/06/2026

ECCE HOMO

As we enter pride month, we invite you all to reflect on Brian’s excellent IDAHOBIT sermon from St George’s in Belfast.

It is a thoughtful and powerful reflection on faith, q***r dignity, and what it means to really see one another. https://open.spotify.com/episode/27RBoPK3cbbMKFFehPVK2w

Rewilding Faith Podcast · Episode

07/05/2026

As Christians ourselves, we know this is not a “dark day for Christian freedom.” It may be, however, a wake-up call to a particular kind of assumed and entitled Christian privilege.

And that’s what Christian lobbyists like the Christian Institute are really afraid of losing. Not freedom, but privilege.

To be clear, Clive Johnston was not persecuted for preaching the gospel. He was held to account for intentionally breaching a designated safe access zone.

Safe access zones exist for a reason.

They are there to protect people accessing legal healthcare from harassment, intimidation, pressure, and unwanted confrontation at moments that may already be deeply private, painful, complex or vulnerable.

Christians should welcome such protections, not seek to undermine them.

Yes, of course Christians have the right to hold religious convictions. We have the right to gather, worship, pray, preach, organise, campaign, write, speak and advocate.

But that right does not mean we are entitled to impose our religious views on people in every public space - especially not by amplifying them at people who have not asked to be our audience.

We all know the kind of obnoxious street “preaching” that mistakes volume for courage, bravado for witness, and public nuisance for faithfulness. And many ordinary, faithful Christians are just as fed up with it as the rest of the general public.

And more often than not, we don’t even recognise the words being shouted as anything like the actual message of Jesus. It is usually just a narrow, fundamentalist version of Christianity, propped up with a scattering of carefully selected, out-of-context Bible verses.

We know that Jesus did not coerce. Jesus did not harass. Jesus did not dominate. Jesus did not force himself upon the vulnerable.

So yes, Christians should care about freedom of religion. But we should also care about freedom from religious intimidation. We should care about the difference between sharing actual good news, and just shouting bad theology at strangers.

And we should be honest enough to admit that much of what passes for “bold Christian witness” in public is not brave, not loving, and certainly not Christlike. It is usually just fundamentalist entitlement with an amplifier.

A sincerely held faith does not need to be obnoxious. Deep religious conviction does not need to be intrusive or combative.

And Christian freedom does not give us the right to ignore other people’s dignity, vulnerability and boundaries.

Safe access zones should be respected by everyone.

Not because Christianity has nothing to say (it absolutely does) but because real love knows how not to make itself the centre of the story.

15/04/2026

Rewilding The Cross: Why did Jesus “have” to die?

All welcome for an interactive discussion about the cross, atonement and what it all means for us today.

7pm - 8.30pm, tonight at Harbour Faith Community in Carrickfergus.

31/03/2026

HOLY WEEK

As we enter Holy Week, we're delighted to share a unique Stations of the Cross resource from Brian and our friends at First Church. Feel free to use it in your own space at a time that works for you.

Grace and Peace ❤️🛟

While we move through Holy Week, as part of our ongoing Rewilding Faith series in collaboration with Harbour Faith Community we developed this version of the Stations of the Cross that enters into conversation with our current contexts.

(Link in comments)

——

“The Stations of the Cross is an ancient practice — a way of walking, in imagination and in
body, the road that leads toward death. It emerged from pilgrims who longed to walk the
streets of Jerusalem but could not make the journey. So they made the journey where they
were. Fourteen stopping points, fourteen stations, each marking a moment in the story of a
man being executed by an occupying empire.

The practice is most familiar to our Catholic and Anglican friends, but it belongs to no single tradition. You do not need to hold any particular belief to walk this road. You do not need to be certain of anything. What the stations ask is simpler and harder than belief: they ask you
to look. To stay present. To refuse, for a little while, the comfort of turning away.

Let’s be honest about what that costs. Most of the people closest to Jesus could not do it.
The disciples — the ones who had followed him for years, who had shared meals with him,
who had made large promises — most of them were gone by the time he was crucified. They
had scattered. What remained at the foot of the cross was a small, unlikely group. A few women. A beloved friend. People who perhaps had less to lose, simply could not
bring themselves to go — or perhaps the ones who had the courage to remain.

These stations are drawn from what is happening right now — in our city, across these
islands, and around the world. Some of what you will encounter here is contested. People of genuine goodwill disagree, sometimes sharply, about what should be done. The stations are not asking you to resolve those disagreements or to abandon your own views. They are asking something different, and something harder: can you remain? Can you keep your face turned toward those who are suffering, even when the questions around them are ones you
are still working out? Can you stay at the cross, even without the answer?

Very few people managed that in the story of that Friday. But some did. That is what this
practice is asking of us.”

25/03/2026

A joy to practice some gentle seaside contemplation on Saturday. In the words of John O'Donohue:

When the rhythm of the heart becomes hectic,
Time takes on the strain until it breaks;
Then all the unattended stress falls in
On the mind like an endless, increasing weight,

Weariness invades your spirit.
Gravity begins falling inside you,
Dragging down every bone.

The tide you never valued has gone out.
And you are marooned on unsure ground.
Something within you has closed down;
And you cannot push yourself back to life.

At first your thinking will darken
And sadness take over like listless weather.
The flow of unwept tears will frighten you.

You have travelled too fast over false ground;
Now your soul has come to take you back.

Take refuge in your senses, open up
To all the small miracles you rushed through.

Become inclined to watch the way of rain
When it falls slow and free.

Imitate the habit of twilight,
Taking time to open the well of colour
That fostered the brightness of day.

Draw alongside the silence of stone
Until its calmness can claim you.
Be excessively gentle with yourself.

Gradually, you will return to yourself,
Having learned a new respect for your heart
And the joy that dwells far within slow time.

13/03/2026

A group of Harbour and Corrymeela members and friends would like to invite you to a welcoming, inclusive weekend which is an extension of the recent public theology course Becoming Holy: Q***r, Trans and Women’s Lives as Sacred.

Based at the Corrymeela Centre by the sea on the North Coast of Ireland. The weekend will offer time for retreat, a range of theology sessions including Decolonising Faith, Q***r Theology and Embodiment Practices.

Come with comfortable clothes, a journal and good pens, and enjoy time with other folk eager to share, rest and learn together.

1st - 3rd May, 2026
Cost only £100, from Friday 5.00pm until Sunday 2pm. All meals included!

(Additional cost for single room supplement.)

Subsidised places available - please email [email protected]

For general enquiries - email [email protected]
To book, click here: http://forms.office.com/e/tk6yTiFwv3

Grace and Peace ❤️🌿

04/02/2026

A chance tonight to have a non-defensive, thoughtful, open conversation about the Bible. (How often does that happen??)

If you’ve ever felt that struggling with the Bible meant something was wrong with you, or that you had to choose between honesty and faith, this is for you.

- Tonight (Wed 4 Feb), 7pm
- First Church Belfast (Halls), Rosemary Street (city centre)
- Free, no booking required

Just bring your curiosity, grab a coffee and gather round the campfire 🔥

More details:

Many people aren’t confused about the Bible — they’re just tired of it. Tired of being told it’s inerrant. Tired of watching it used to control, exclude, or shame. Tired of feeling that honest questions mean faith is slipping away. This Campfire is a space for people who still care about fai...

24/01/2026

For the month of February, we’re offering an extended opportunity to renegotiate our relationship with the Bible.

For far too long, brittle fundamentalism has kept the raucous pages of scripture on a tight leash of insipid literalism and flat “inerrancy” - and too often it’s been used to control, exclude, and shame.

But the Bible itself never asks us to treat it that way. It’s far more inspired, spacious and wild. As Lewis might have said; it’s not a tame book, you know. 😉

No wonder so many of us get stuck in the cul-de-sacs and dead ends of “but what about evolution?”, or “why is God so angry in these pages?”, or “what’s with all the arbitrary rules about cloven hoofs?”

But what if the problem was never the Bible itself, but our overwrought assumptions about it? What if we’ve completely missed its inherent wild wonder, and found ourselves instead among those who simply “stuff their cups with parchment and critique the taste of ink,” as Hafiz would say.

So if you’ve struggled with the Bible (or avoided it) or been wounded by how it’s been weaponised… then you’re not alone. And you’re right to question what you’ve been told.

This February we’ll be exploring Rewilding the Bible: From Rule-Keeping to Wisdom. Not to “solve” scripture, and definitely not to replace old certainties with new ones, but to learn instead how to read these texts with honesty, humility, and imagination… and to recover them as a rewilded wisdom tradition for the ages.

You’re welcome to join us on Sundays at Harbour in Carrickfergus throughout February as we begin this journey. And if you’re church-wary but still faith-curious, consider this a gentle on-ramp back into conversation.

Each month thereafter, we’ll reflect on a new topic such as God, Heaven & Hell and Body & Desire. If you’re interested in the wider, year-long journey of “Rewilding Faith”, see the link in the comment section.