My Passion with Richard Foster: Opening the doors to a church with a difference

Mind-numbing, monotonous, tedious and irrelevant – perhaps those are some of the words that jump into your mind when the word "church" is used.

If that's you, then I know how you feel. In fact, because I was born a vicar's son, I've sat through my fair share of boring services in my time. Now that I'm 29, married and with a son on the way, you might expect me to have given up on going to church long ago – and yet I haven't.

In fact, my passion is a new church meeting which I helped to set up a couple of years ago. We started Sunday@Seven because we wanted to create a church meeting for young adults, students and older teenagers, which engaged with the big issues of life, death, God and eternity, without all the trappings of a traditional church. We wanted to be welcoming to people whose previous experiences of church had left them cold.

While we still call it "church", it's not what you'd think. There are no pews; we sit around tables, caf style, there's decent food and drink and the music is from the 21st century. The content of the meetings is clear, to the point and relevant, and there's always a chance to discuss and ask questions so people don't feel preached at. Everyone's welcome to join in with as much or as little as they like.

The one thing we've made sure we haven't changed is the man at the centre of it all: Jesus Christ. Everything we do at Sunday@Seven is focussed on him, and hearing about him in his own words, the Bible.

It's Jesus, more than the tables, the songs and the food, that makes Sunday@Seven interesting.

And for me, despite all those dull services I'd sat through, when I found out the facts about Jesus, I discovered he is anything but boring – Jesus is a man well worth knowing about and my passion is that everyone, young and old, should have the opportunity to look into his claims and hear what he says for themselves, so they can discover what I did.

I get passionate about lots of things – my wife, politics, food and, sad though it may be, even auditing – but my greatest passion is for people to come to know Jesus for themselves.

Lots of people who aren't interested in traditional church have done just that at Sunday@ Seven. We encourage each other to go the extra mile for those we meet, just as Jesus Christ did for us. It really is a fantastic thing to be involved with.