Over Holy Week, I made resurrection buns. If you’ve never encountered them before, they’re wonderfully strange: marshmallows wrapped in croissant pastry, dipped in butter and cinnamon sugar before being baked. The marshmallow represents Jesus placed in the tomb. But when the buns come out of the oven, the marshmallow has vanished. Empty.
And yet what remains is sweet. Transformed. Changed by what has happened within it.
I’ve returned to that image often.
At Inclusive Church, we’ve been deep in databases and directories: untangling and auditing our records, building a clearer picture of where we are at, and where we are going. Some churches have closed. Some communities have drifted. Some people no longer have the energy they once did.
There are gaps.
And yet, there is also an undeniable growing momentum.
The response to the Open Letter made that impossible to ignore. Thousands of people publicly saying: this matters. We are here. We care about the future of the Church. We want to see genuine equality for LGBTQIA+ folk. Even as some sought to dismiss or minimise those numbers, we know they represent something much bigger still — for every published name, there are many more quietly also longing for a Church rooted in justice, welcome, honesty, and hope.
But longing alone does not build movements. Or bring change.
Pentecost was not born from certainty or comfort. It emerged from frightened unsure people gathering anyway, sharing resources, time, stories and choosing community over isolation.
I think the same is true now.
It is easy, in anxious times, to become cynical. To assume nothing will change. To retreat into silos. If we collectively decide that nothing we do matters, then nothing will. Hope is not passive. It is the stubborn decision to invest in possibility anyway. To organise. To build. To connect. To keep showing up for one another especially when the future feels uncertain.
Inclusive Church is not, at its heart, about buildings, structures, or institutions. It is about people — because people are at the heart of God’s heart. People who live and love, wonder and weep. People seeking meaning, hope, direction, belonging. People learning to recognise God not only beyond us, but within and between us.
The early Church grew not because it had power, prestige, or perfect systems, but from courage, generosity and shared life. They gathered around tables and broke bread together. They listened and learned from one another. They became rooted in the radical possibility that ordinary people, fully human and divinely inspired, could help shape a different kind of world.
Perhaps the invitation of this season is simply this: don’t give up on each other. Resist apathy. Lean further into community. Invest in the things that help people not just survive, but thrive.
After all, resurrection has always begun with people willing to believe that life can emerge from even the emptiest places. And with God, there is never actually nothing... | 
