For the past three Sundays I’ve been speaking at the various bases of the multi-site Hope Church in South East London, which is part of Regions Beyond. They have five venues at Bromley, Orpington, Chislehurst, West Wickham and Downham. The photo is from this morning at Orpington which is led by the irrepressible Colin Potter, who told me that he should be retired by now! The Orpington site until recently was led by Tony Hall. I had a great lunch with Tony and his family at Bromley where he now leads the team. The Bromley venue is an Anglican Church building called St Luke’s which Hope have already done a great job with, transforming it inside and out. Chislehurst is a new work, which was full of energy and vision and about twice as many people as could have been reasonably expected. I was delighted to see my old friend and former colleague Simon Beale leading worship there. Believe it or not, when I was presenting on Invicta FM back in the 1990s, Simon was a co-presenter. You can still hear Simon on Heart but my radio days are long behind me. It’s amazing how despite planting a new church in Central London called Trinity led by Daniel Macleod, who was until recently leading Hope Bromley, Hope seem to have re-grown their numbers and I met loads of amazing people each week I was travelling between their sites. Hope Church was pioneered by my old friend Trevor Payne, who before church leadership, ran a record shop. (Does anyone remember buying singles and LPs from record shops?) Trevor explained to me once how Top of the Pops worked out which single was No.1 in the charts each week. But that’s another story.