Hebron was never meant to be just a website. From the beginning, there was always a dream of it becoming a real place, somewhere you could actually arrive at, put down whatever you had been carrying and stay for a while.

We have never imagined anything grand. In my mind it is a little piece of woodland somewhere in Northern Ireland, perhaps slightly wild around the edges, with paths worn between the trees rather than carefully laid. There would be a workshop, simple and practical, where the smell of wood shavings mingled with paint, herbs hung drying from the rafters and half-finished projects sat waiting for someone to return to them. Outside there would be a fire pit, because somehow some of the best conversations happen when people are gathered around a fire.

It would be a place for making things. Painting, carving, foraging, learning bushcraft, working with plants and natural materials, perhaps cooking something over the fire. Skills that have been passed from hand to hand for generations, alongside the freedom simply to experiment, make a mess and discover that you are more creative than you thought you were.

But Hebron was never really about the activities.

The heart of it has always been the people who might come through the gate.

I think about the person who has had a difficult week and doesn't particularly want to talk about it. They shouldn't have to. There ought to be room for someone to sit beside the fire with a mug in their hands and simply watch the flames for a while. Someone else might disappear into the workshop and spend an afternoon carving a spoon. Another might take a sketchbook beneath the trees, while someone who has never considered themselves artistic discovers the strange satisfaction of making paint from the earth beneath their feet.

There would be laughter too, I hope. Stories around the fire, shared food, muddy boots by the door and people teaching one another the things they know. Some would come because they love the outdoors, some because they want to learn a skill, some because they need company and others because they need quiet.

And running gently through all of it would be our faith.

Creation has always seemed to me one of the easiest places to become aware of the Creator. There is something about standing beneath trees, watching sparks disappear into a darkening sky or noticing the astonishing detail of something as ordinary as a leaf that reminds us that the world is still full of wonder. Hebron would be a Christian place, but never somewhere a person had to pretend to be something they weren't before they were welcome. Perhaps sometimes faith would mean prayer around the fire or opening the Bible together. At other times it might simply look like kindness, hospitality, listening and making room.

That is the Hebron we dream about.

We don't have the woodland yet. There is no workshop tucked beneath the trees, no smoke rising from the fire and no gate to walk through. At the moment Hebron exists in articles, paintings, books, conversations, ideas scribbled into notebooks and an awful lot of prayer.

Sometimes that makes the dream feel very far away. At other times I wonder if this is simply how places like Hebron begin: long before the first post is driven into the ground, someone has to imagine what might happen there.

So for now, we keep building the parts we can build. We share what we know, make things, write, tell stories, spend time outdoors and keep talking about the place we hope Hebron might one day become.

Perhaps somewhere there is already a little piece of woodland waiting for all of this. Perhaps there are people we haven't met yet who will one day help build the workshop, teach something around the fire, plant a garden, share a skill, make the tea or simply pull up a chair and become part of the place.

I like that thought.

And perhaps one day there really will be a gate at the edge of a woodland with Hebron written above it.

I'd quite like to see who walks through it.