Mark, tell me a bit about yourself and your background.

I grew up in Bury, near Manchester. My dad was a social worker who became a vicar; I got serious about God when I was a teenager.

Around that time, I also changed my diet, started running, avoided drinking - even coffee, let alone alcohol! I was a bit of a teenage Pharisee, really. But in it all, I grew a passion for justice and I saw that lifestyle change was important if you're going to follow Jesus.

At Nottingham University, I met my wife, Ailsa; we've been married 13 years in July and have four kids. I was a youth worker for a bit, then an R.E. teacher. After I trained in the ministry, we were in Croydon for three years, in Hammersmith for three and a half years, and now I'm a leader in a church here in Leeds.

How did Breathe get started?

At university, I was part of a prayer group in which God did some powerful things. Out of that quality of fellowship, came an important conversation which revolved around this question: when we’ve got money what are we going to do with it? We knew we needed to learn about sharing, about having a vision beyond being comfortable. We tried to face honestly the challenges of living as Christians in the UK’s consumer culture. We started sharing our budgets with each other, exploring real accountability. We wondered what had happened to the vision of simplicity set out, for instance, in Richard Foster’s book Freedom of Simplicity. “Who’s doing it now?” we asked.

I started to dream of a movement for simple living. But, as I often said to Ailsa, if there was such a movement, I wasn’t sure if I could be part of it – “I’m not good enough, I’m not living simply enough”. Then the thought came: what if the movement wasn’t for people who had “arrived” at a simple lifestyle, but for people who want to get there or at least want to start getting there, or even just wanted to ask the question, what does Christian simplicity look like?

I said to Ailsa, “We could call it ‘Choke’ because Jesus said our possessions choke us”. She said no-one would want to be part of something called ‘Choke’. She was right of course; we called it Breathe.

Within six months, a friend and I found ourselves at a Make Poverty History protest in Edinburgh, standing by a stall and inviting others to join Breathe.

And you had a slogan!

Yes. "Less stuff, more life." That was in 2005. We had about 100 people sign up on the day; now we have nearly 1,000 people on the e-mailing list and the blog gets plenty of interest. We produce e-newsletters, tell stories, give personal accounts, undermine adverts - we try to be creative and stir ideas and inspiration.

Undermine adverts?

Well, take the ticket sales company, Lastminute.com. They promoted travel breaks with the slogan “Life: book now.” Okay, it’s catchy and witty, but when you actually think about it, this slogan stinks. What if I can’t afford to book “life”? That must make me, what? Dead? And even if I do go away, this seven to fourteen day break is “life”. What if it rains when I get there? And when I return, what about the other fifty-odd weeks of the year? Are they non-life? The whole advert works on the lie that quality of life can be bought and sold – with the threat of “not living” hovering in the background.

So we started an “ad-watch” – critiquing adverts, unmasking their lies. It might not seem all that radical, compared to, say, living in an intentional community, but it starts where an awful lot of people are actually at.

It starts helping people question the consumer lie?

Christians are on a spectrum on this issue. It’s like a wedge. Some Christians, like some of you in the Jesus Army or Shane Claiborne, are on the radical edge, the thin edge of the wedge: they’re doing simple living and intentional community; it’s amazing and inspirational – though there’s the danger of superiority creeping in.

At the other extreme, there’s the “prosperity gospel” (the fat end of the wedge!)

Through Breathe, we’re after the mainstream, the middle people: interested, maybe passionate – but clueless. What does simplicity mean for them?

There can be a lot of defensiveness in this area – so we’ve tried to use humour; we’ve tried to be creative; we’ve tried to offer options and be gracious.

I guess there can be a tension between not wanting to be heavy and yet having something serious to say?

That was where we started six years ago. Actually, these days I'm seeing that you do have to require something of people; there's got to be challenge.

I sometimes worry about what I call "radicalism by proxy" - someone else does the radicalism on my behalf. I read their book, buy their badge - I'm a fan of Shane Claiborne or I'm a fan of the Northumbria Christian Community - but I don't change my life. It's too easy to look on and say, "Woah, it's so radical" and somehow feel that this makes a bit of radicalism rub off on me. But it doesn't.

Is that where your book, Consumer Detox, comes in?

The book came out of where we were going with Breathe. In 2008 and 2009 we held Breathe conferences, then last year we did something called Conspiracy of Freedom and produced four short films, one of which has been seen by more than 5,000 people on YouTube, which is encouraging.

The time came when I felt I’d learnt enough to have a first stab at the book. It’s in twelve chapters – twelve steps for starting to walk away from “addiction to stuff”: how it affects our relationships; how it affects the environment; how it affects our spirituality, our relationship with God.

So how are you personally doing simplicity?

Good question… Complicatedly!

We try to maximise our giving, so we keep a careful budget to stay in control of money and increase the amount that we are giving. We've looked at lifestyle choices. We don't go for foreign holidays. We try and live more sustainably, growing food in raised beds; we're getting better at our composting! We're trying to reduce our heating; we insulated the house, stuff like that. My shoes are from a charity shop, my watch was given me, my t-shirts are old (I don't know what that tells you). We've just disconnected out TV for 9 months.

But it's the deeper things, too, the attitude things - like cultivating gratitude; simply saying grace before meals. This is what I try to get in the book: aiming at a more thankful life. On Saturdays, I only pray prayers of thanks. It's part of being consumer resistant.

Earlier, you mentioned intentional community as part of the radical edge of Christianity. What do you make of community?

I think it’s vital and it’s prophetic. Christians are called to live in ways that anticipate the kingdom. Those who give up their possessions or share possessions demonstrate the koinonia, the sharing, that we’re all called to.

Funnily enough, when we moved here, we rented this house and we didn’t realise our neighbours are Christians in our church. Now we share stuff, they baby-sit for us at last minute notice and so on.

Accidental community?

Yeah… and even the most intentional communities can only ever be a glimpse of the kingdom, actually, but it's such a vital glimpse. That's why one of the things Breathe is trying to do is take the stories of those on that particular edge and tell it to others: to remind us what we're all supposed to be about.

What would you say to a community like New Creation Christian Community and the Jesus Army?

I think I would say "Thank you". Thank you for taking the bible seriously, and for being a prophetic sign. Keep faith with that because the pendulum is swinging back towards community.

My hope is that intentional communities, like the Jesus Army's community, don't isolate yourselves, but allow yourselves to speak to wider Church - because otherwise you're not serving your prophetic function. Keep asking the question: How can what you've learnt be shared to the wider Church?

Any suggestions how?

I think someone in the Jesus Army should become a blogger on the Breathe website! Share the stories of what you guys are learning and bring it into the wider conversation. Maybe Breathe can help the Jesus Army to fulfil its prophetic role – and the Jesus Army could help Breathe to fulfil its role in widening the conversation.

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This article was taken from our Jesus Life magazine, and was published in May 2011.

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