Heartbroken to learn today of the loss of Mark Elston, a pioneer, a punk, a prophet. I have rich and fond memories of the exciting years when so many folks were exploring, deconstructing and reconfiguring Christianity for the 21st century. Mark was a passionate lover of people and the divine, who sided always with the outsiders and the folks on the margins. I treasure our times walking around Covent Garden - dreaming up the impossible, subverting the inevitable, encountering strangers and making a space for outsiders. And so much laughter and joy as we conspired together.

Vanessa's poignant memorial says, "he was full of passion for God AND life - a punk before he became a Christian, by picking up a bible on the streets of New York, and who never let the church dampen his essential Punk Spirit... Mark had something of a pentecostal fire in his bones, he was very different to the bland, insipid, watered down, comfortable, lacking in substance culture that took over so much of the evangelical church. He loved Bukowski, Hip Hop, Gospel, Punk, Jonny Cash as The Man in Black, he loved street culture, he read a lot, was a larger than life, all or nothing character, and I loved him for it."

I was glad to call him a friend.
There were shadows too, and tragically a church that could not ultimately hold or care for such a wild hope spirit, his gifts and his ghosts.
With tears and with smiles, and with deep love for those he has left behind, I say 'salut Mark', may peace be yours this day, and you can have the final words,"blessed are the beggars, for they get heaven"