Here’s the text for the 7 September 2026 “Pause for Thought” I offered on the Breakfast Show with Sara Cox on BBC Radio 2. Listen here.

School’s back in – kids are uniformed, parents relieved, uni students packing their bags. It reminds me of my first week in theology college – aka vicar school – 1997, aged 21.

Some of us new students got chatting in the queue to register for lectures – trying to get the best professors – and we realised we had more in common than vicaring aspirations. For example: a love of Seinfeld, and Friends, the hit TV shows of the day.

And so we decided to meet-up one night in somebody’’s student-flat, to watch telly together. And we had so much fun, we decided to do it every week. We’d all bring food to share, and while we laughed at George Costanza or Phoebe Buffay, we’d gossip and swap notes and share life. Over three years of theology school, we moved from watching Friends to being friends.

Such close friends, in fact, that when we graduated in 2000, we decided to keep meeting. Not every week, as we were flung across the world in different vocations – ministers, lecturers, activists, one very good politician. But every summer, now for more than a quarter-century, we’ve gathered for a week of holiday and proper-catching-up. Fourteen of us including partners, with an added bunch of thirteen beautiful kids, some of them at uni now themselves.

I’m a proper nerd – I’ve always loved school. But honestly, my favourite school? It’s these old friends, who can belly-laugh, and cut through the nonsense, and help me find the truth – all at the same time. We’ve experienced beautiful things together, hilarious things, terrible things. We’ve loved each other, and sometimes we’ve really fallen out. And when it would’ve been so much easier to let it all go, we’ve held on to each other, because we know we still have so much to learn.

Before Christianity was called Christianity, at its very beginning, it was called The Way. It was ever intended to be just a set of beliefs or values, or a mere ethical code – but a way of life, a school of living, together in union with God, with each other, and all Creation.

As the new school year begins, I’m grateful for all the teachers who’ve shaped me, but especially for these old friends and the ongoing classroom of faith we share.

I believe there are some lessons about God that only friends can teach.