This post was originally shared on the network Leeds blog.

I’m coming to the end of my second year training for ordained ministry in the Methodist Church, so this seems like a good point to reflect on some of what I’ve been learning.
Some of that learning has happened in the expected places: essays, placements, sermons, tutorials, worship, and late-night reading. Studying part time can be tricky. It takes up evenings, weekends, and time that might otherwise have been spent with family, friends, hobbies, or rest. Fortunately, I enjoy theology, so an evening spent thinking about inclusion in John’s Gospel is not exactly a hardship.
One assignment asked us to record a short video sharing something of our faith journey, then invite Christian and non-Christian friends to respond. I had around fifteen responses, and almost everyone who replied was a Christian.
That makes sense. I’ve worked for churches or Christian organisations for six or seven years. I’m training for ministry, worshipping in church, and helping lead things connected with church. Most of my active friendships are now through Christian networks.
One risk of church life, and perhaps especially of ministry, is that it can take up so much time that we gradually have less contact with people beyond church. There are only so many evenings in a week, and church can easily fill them.
I’m not saying Christian community is a bad thing. We need communities that pray for us, form us, and help us keep going. But being formed by Christian community is not quite the same as only spending time with Christians.
A friend of mine once left ordained ministry for a while and became a bus driver. When he later returned to ministry, he said he’d had more pastoral conversations, and prayed with more people, than in his previous five years in church-based ministry. It makes me wonder whether we sometimes expect ministry to happen mainly in the places we already recognise as church.
For me, online gaming communities are some of the few spaces where I regularly spend time with people who are not churchgoers. That may sound odd in a church blog, but it probably shouldn’t. For many people these are spaces of friendship, humour, care, frustration, and belonging.
In John 17, Jesus does not pray for his disciples to be taken out of the world. He sends them into it. I need to keep hearing that as I move into the next stage of training, but I don’t think it is only a question for people training for ministry.
Perhaps it is something for all of us to ask. Where are we still meeting people beyond church? Where are we listening without needing to turn every conversation into a church activity? Are our churches helping us stay connected with the wider community, or mostly giving us more church things to do?
If we believe God is already at work in the world, we may need to be honest about whether we are spending enough time there.