Don't do dialogue, play football!

One of the great things about meetings of these kinds is the stories people share - normally just before everyone is about to settle back down into the meeting after a coffee break.

Hans Ucko told us that at the end of an interreligious meeting the WCC had been hosting in Hong Kong - one of two participants from Egypt (who both had identical names) who was a secular Muslim, said "don't do dialogue, play football!"

Alan Race then jumped in and said that in Leicester UK they had done exactly that - a Christian clergy against Muslim Imams game was held. The Imams won 6 - 0. However they then set up a Leiceseter inter-faith football team which played against another inter-faith team from another town and then Leicester won.

Can't remember anymore whether a Protestant team or a Catholic team won the championship at the ecumenical kirchentag in Berlin in 2003 but as we prepare for the next ecumenical Kirchentag in Munich in 2010 maybe we need to set up an international ecumenical team and see how they do. I'm sure my colleague Simon Oxley could come up with a suitably ecumenically phrased programme description for this in terms of ecumenical education and team building, - he's probably the only person in the world to have season tickets for Manchester City and Servette football teams, a sure sign that whatever else he still hopes for miracles.