Just over fifteen years ago I stood in the snow outside St. Andrew’s United Reformed Church, Upper Hanover St, Sheffield, wondering what sort of people worshipped there and whether, if I got the job I was going for, I would be one of them. On the notice board outside it still said Peter Chave was minister and it was not until I got home in the evening that I learnt from my father that the congregation was in vacancy.

I was at the time a member of a very different United Reformed Church congregation, one which from my perspective now, seems quite extraordinary, but at the time I felt it was totally normal. It was a full year before I was to begin attending St. Andrew’s thus fulfilling my secret dream of living, working and worshipping locally. What I was totally oblivious to at the time was I was starting a journey that would lead me in fifteen years' time to be studying for a PhD.

Dear Friends

Now I’m 41 I’ve got my midlife crisis out of the way, so I’m reflecting on what I have to look forward to as an Older Person. But being old isn’t what it used to be. When I was little, old age began when people retired from work in their sixties and reached for their slippers. Now the baby boomer generation are starting to retire – but they’re reaching for scuba gear.

Dropping a big hint, I always love it when someone really wants to know what I believe. But I was taken aback recently just after the service, in which I’d been going on about the coming of God’s kingdom, when someone asked me, ‘Sarah, do you really believe in that? Do you really think God’s kingdom is going to come?’