I appreciate the comments, people. Let me respond to a couple of points. Incidentally, you're welcome to post feedback on the OST site if you really get exercised about it – I don’t want to clog up this blog with my problems.

First, the issue of ‘safety’, which was never really a major part of the argument, needs some clarification. The court of the Gentiles was ‘safe’ in the literal sense that it was as close as the Gentiles could get to the place of God’s dwelling without incurring the death penalty. It seems to me that that represents a rather powerful idea, one which is validated by Jesus’ words about it being a house of prayer for all nations – so perhaps it is safe in the sense that it has theological legitimacy. But my bigger concern is that this space should be safe from overzealous, predatory, proselytizing Christians and from the stifling effect of Christian culture, etc. Apart from that, I would not disagree with what has been said about the ‘unsafeness’ of entering the temple courts, the difficulty of the Christian way, and so on.

Secondly, my feeling is that the primary value of the outer courts analogy is that it stands as a corrective to the prevailing mentality of the church. The point is, Dan, that broadly speaking we are too ‘entrenched in our patterns of religious practice’. Because this is a biblical analogy, because it starts from the church’s perception of itself as a sanctuary within the world, the exclusive dwelling of the Holy Spirit, the picture may help believers find a way out of the closeted, closed-minded environment of the church back into the normal world. A ‘court of the gentiles space’ may not provide anything that ‘the people of the way should not already be doing over a few drinks at the local pub’, or whatever. The problem is that, by and large, they’re not doing it. You’re way ahead of us. It raises an interesting point: arguably the believers needs the court of the Gentiles more than the Gentiles do!

Thirdly, at the moment here in London I’m assuming that this ‘space’ will need to be both structured and unstructured. Yes, I think it should fundamentally be a way of life in the way that Dan has described (‘24/7 every fricking place we go’), but my fear is that if there is not some level of intentionality and organization about it, people will eventually drift back into their churches, back into their customary ways of thinking, and shut the door behind them. We need to learn how to do it. But there are various ways of providing that input and organization – and how we do it will depend a lot on the cultural and religious context in which we’re working. I guess, though, I would like to see the implications of this sort of thinking worked all the way up from the natural everyday interaction of ‘people of the way’ with those around them, through larger community structures (which may look not at all like church), to the more rarefied level of culture, worldview, ideas, etc.

Thanks for listening.