A message from Rev Dr Samuel Wells:

The original Being With course was a group at St Martin-in-the-Fields for exploring faith created by Sally Hitchiner and me, which first met in January 2020. It went online in lockdown and proliferated during the pandemic. It spread back in-the-room as conventional meeting patterns resumed in 2022. Since then, it’s been practised both in-the-room and online. Two books, Being With: A Course Exploring Christian Faith and Life: Leaders’ Guide and Being With: A Course Exploring Christian Faith and Life: Participants’ Companion were published in 2022. James Fawcett began as Head of Being With in 2022. He has done an outstanding job of building an international network of trained leaders and participating congregations such that many thousands of people new to, returning to, re-evaluating and seeking enrichment in faith are now ‘graduates’ of the original Being With course in many countries, particularly the UK and the US. He has now a close involvement in the movement and a level of experience in running courses and training leaders that goes well beyond mine, and his reflections and insights on all aspects of the course have enriched and enhanced subsequent materials.

The Being With course arose from four sources. One was a longstanding sense that churches across a broad spectrum of theological and liturgical traditions are generally less attuned to what’s involved in bringing people to faith than evangelical ones, and generally need to up their game in this area. Another was my theological exposition of ‘being with,’ beginning in 2011 with the publication of Living Without Enemies, and explored in several books, the best known of which are A Nazareth Manifesto (2015), Incarnational Ministry (2017) and Incarnational Mission (2018). Being with began as a way of reimagining mission, but has expanded to become a project for reinterpreting the whole of Christian theology, as fully articulated in Constructing an Incarnational Theology (2025). A third was Sally Hitchiner’s extensive background in leading and promoting enquirers’ courses and her energy and imagination for how such a culture could be translated into a different setting. And the fourth was the particular culture of St Martin-in-the-Fields in central London, a community where faith and action have long been held close together, and where initiatives that have benefited the wider church and world have long found fertile soil. While this volume bears my name, I want to give great credit to Sally, without whose inspiration there wouldn’t be a Being With course and movement, and James, who has with great skill organised, garnered funds for, extended and empowered the movement. I also want to celebrate the now myriad numbers of leaders and participants whose engagement and enthusiasm have made this now an international movement.