A church without walls
The Documentary Podcast
BBC
4.3 • 2.7K Ratings
🗓️ 1 May 2026
⏱️ 27 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Pastor Jane Codrington grew up in a conservative faith environment before leaving the institutional church to found We Are Church - a community for those excluded by traditional structures. Set within a quiet, gated Johannesburg neighbourhood reflecting the city’s wealth and social divides, the church brings people together to connect, belong, and celebrate community. Jane emphasises this is not a ‘queer church’- though LGBTQ members are welcome, but a space for anyone pushed to society’s edges. Some consider what she is doing blasphemous. She has faced accusations of “harbouring sin” or “leading people to hell,” alongside hostility for her radical inclusivity. Jane reflects on the personal cost of leaving the institutional church and the heartbreak she has experienced in her family. She speaks candidly about grief, doubt, and how her faith has been reshaped by both loss and radical inclusivity.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | BBC Sounds, Music, Radio, Podcasts. |
| 0:07.0 | If you need help on money matters, you're not alone. |
| 0:10.5 | In the Martin Lewis podcast, I'll give you tips to keep more cash in your pocket |
| 0:13.9 | and answer your important questions. |
| 0:16.7 | Now that we're starting from scratch, what is the best way for us to move forward? |
| 0:21.2 | To help your everyday finances just add up. |
| 0:24.8 | Let's see what we can do. |
| 0:26.2 | The Martin Lewis podcast, listen on BBC Sounds. |
| 0:32.1 | The suburb is on one side of the M1. |
| 0:37.9 | Kind of like the main motorway that takes you from Johannesburg to Pretoria. |
| 0:43.5 | It's a Monday morning in Johannesburg, South Africa. |
| 0:47.3 | I'm with Jane Codvington and we're heading to a place where a church founded by Jane meets a couple of times a month. |
| 0:55.0 | So we're heading into a school called Belivista School, which is a primary school, a remedial primary |
| 1:05.0 | school. |
| 1:06.0 | Jane was a Methodist pastor for years until she walked away from institutional religion to build her own church from scratch. |
| 1:14.7 | She called it We Are Church. |
| 1:17.1 | She says it's a community for those who haven't always felt at home in traditional church. |
| 1:23.2 | We're a group of Christ followers seeking to find a space to be together without doing traditional church. |
| 1:33.9 | We meet in a school hall. We really just are seeking to be love in the spaces we find ourselves. |
| 1:41.8 | I'm John Offord and this is the documentary on the BBC World Service. |
| 1:46.2 | For this week's heart and soul, I'm in South Africa hearing how setting up this new church |
| 1:51.4 | has been far from easy for Jane. |
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