"Jeesus Chriiisst!" yelled the man standing next to me in the main street as the black jet suddenly and obscenely roared up and over the supermarket and disappeared, panicking us all silly.

Well, he certainly didn't say, "Merciful Allah!" Nor would most people in little old Great Britain, though they might in other parts of the world.

That's because Christianity in its various forms has been the mainline religion in this country for many centuries. Much of the way we run things, judge things, think things is shaped by the Christian thinking of the past. We eat it, breathe it, sleep it, hear it even if we don't know it and don't want to. It's a basic fact of British life.

There are many people who are Christians and say they are Christians who don't go to Church. Can't cope with it. Disagree with a lot of it.

It's important to distinguish between Christianity and the Church. Christianity is larger than the Church. Sometimes people, and indeed the Church itself, get this the wrong way round. You often see people pointing at the Church and saying, "If that's Christianity, I don't want anything to do with it."

When people say the Church is full of hypocrites, I can only readily agree. And most churchgoers I know would agree as well. When people say to my wife, "Ooh, the vicar is lovely, so kind and patient etc,' she simply says to the fan club, "you don't have to live with him." I live by double standards all the time and am therefore a hypocrite. I try not to be. Sometimes I succeed, sometimes I fail. Like most people I know who are trying to live with some kind of discipline or ideal, and are struggling with it.

Don't judge Jesus by the Church. The Church uses terms like "Majesty, King of Kings," "Sovereign Lord," to describe. Jesus, but extravagant, triumphant, overpowering words like these have ruined Christianity for many. Certainly they are the last words Jesus would use to describe himself. We are stuck with the limits of vocabulary and imagination. What words do you use to describe what you think - what you think - is best?

That's another thing that puts people off. Christians go on about theirs being the top religion as if there is a league table. And Hell's Bells have sounded loud and clear down the ages when Christianity has entered the ring to slug it out with another religious heavyweight over fifteen or more - bloody rounds.

The Church, time and again, puts Jesus in a straight-jacket, boxes him up so that we can live with him down at our level. So often he is an uncomfortable friend.

So, as a Christian, what am I left with to say? I believe that Jeeesus Chriiisst is the best way of learning to balance on the knife edge of life, its contradictions, its triumphs and tragedies. I believe that the Jesus Way is alive at every stage of history and is at the heart of every human being. It is, I believe, the key way. And for me Jesus is the best way of seeing through to the heart of the universe.

I believe that I will find Jesus at the heart of every other religion and there learn more from them of what it is precious to know about God. Other religions will find their God at the heart of Christianity.

I believe in horizons, not boundaries, in converging, not separating. It is as we draw closer together that our unique differences become clearer, not by holding apart.

If it were not for the Jesus Way I would have left the Church long ago. And the lovely Catch 22 is if it wasn't for the Church, with its very mixed bag of human beings, I wouldn't be sitting here writing this at all. And I would have missed so much.