By Ammar Mirza CBE
Faith is a funny thing. You cannot touch it, weigh it or enter it on a balance sheet.
Yet it has built cathedrals, sustained communities, inspired revolutions and carried people through moments when almost everything else had deserted them.
You have got to have faith.
That does not mean we must share the same religion, worship in the same way or even agree on the existence of God. Faith can be religious, personal or communal. It is the belief that tomorrow can be better than today, that people are fundamentally capable of good and that our contribution, however small, matters.
Around three-quarters of the world’s population identifies with a religion. That is nearly six billion people connected by belief, tradition and a search for meaning.
I am not a Christian, but I have always found something profoundly moving about entering a church, or indeed a synagogue, temple, gurdwara or any place of worship. The language, customs and surroundings may differ, but the essentials are remarkably familiar. Welcome the stranger. Feed the hungry. Care for the vulnerable. Forgive where possible. Serve something greater than yourself.
“Faith is taking the first step even when you don’t see the whole staircase,” Martin Luther King Jr famously said.
At a church service, I was invited to stand at the altar and share a prayer. I expected it to be a meaningful ceremonial moment. What I had not expected was for it to make me reconsider something I had developed years earlier while serving as a David Goldman Visiting Professor at Newcastle University.
My Power of 3 is deliberately simple.
Communicate. Collaborate. Celebrate.
Communication creates understanding. Collaboration turns shared understanding into collective action. Celebration tells people that their effort, sacrifice and contribution mattered.
We spend a great deal of time talking, although not always communicating. We collaborate when circumstances force us to. But we remain rather poor at celebrating. We finish one task and charge headlong into the next, barely pausing to thank those who made the first one possible.
Places of worship understand celebration. They celebrate God, prophets, apostles, service, sacrifice, life, death, marriage, birth and renewal. More importantly, they celebrate people. The elderly resident who has attended for 50 years. The volunteer quietly preparing food. The family seeking comfort. The child taking their first steps into faith.
The Government’s Community Life Survey found that Christian adults were more likely than average to volunteer formally at least once a month. Faith, when translated into action, becomes foodbanks, warm spaces, youth clubs, befriending, fundraising and support for families who have nowhere else to turn.
Then there is the biblical parable of the workers in the vineyard. Some began work early in the morning. Others arrived at the eleventh hour. At the end of the day, each received the same wage.
The early workers were not delighted. Most of us would probably have joined their WhatsApp group to complain.
Yet the lesson is not really about wages. It is about generosity, grace and human worth. It reminds us not to resent another person’s opportunity simply because it arrived later than ours. There must always be room for the latecomer, the outsider and the person searching for another chance.
That is where faith and my Power of 3 meet.
Communicate so nobody remains unheard. Collaborate so nobody must struggle alone. Celebrate so nobody feels their contribution has gone unnoticed.
Faith at its best does not divide communities. It gives them roots. It creates places where people belong before anybody asks what they own, earn or do for a living.
As Desmond Tutu put it, “We are made for togetherness.”
In an increasingly noisy, hurried and divided world, perhaps faith still offers us something wonderfully radical. A reason to pause. A reason to serve. A reason to believe in one another.
And, just as importantly, a reason to celebrate.
High Sheriff of Tyne and Wear, Ammar Mirza CBE, is Chair and Founder of ABConnexions & Executive Chair of the AmmarM Group. He also serves as Honorary Colonel of the 101st (Northumbrian) Regiment Royal Artillery and holds a range of roles across the public and private sectors as a leader in inclusive innovation, investment and internationalisation.