I really love Liverpool as a city. But one of the things that never endeared me to it – I say this as the son of scouser, a one-time resident of the city and as an alumnus of its foremost higher education establishment with great affection for the place – is the perpetual need to wang on endlessly about how great it is. There is little more irritating than that verbal reflex all scousers have whenever they hear the word ‘Liverpool’ uttered in a sentence that makes them, almost without any ability to stop themselves, spit out the phrase: ‘best city in the world’. I can get behind having a bit of pride in where you live but the constant need to do it always grated on me.

To be fair to them, Liverpool is not the only place known to do it. I say this again as a one-time resident of the city, Mancunians can have a similar reflex. As the old joke goes, ask someone from Birmingham which is the second city, they will assuredly say ‘Birmingham’. Ask a Mancunian which is the second city, they will assuredly say ‘London’. My experience of Mancunians, having lived in the city for several years, was they were slightly less inclined than scousers to do this, but the tendency was certainly there nonetheless.

One of the things that always endeared me very much to Oldham, and Oldhammers in particular – and I say this as someone who has now lived in Oldham longer than I lived anywhere else so I like to think of myself as an adopted son – is the absolute aversion anybody has to the above mode of thinking. When we brought some American visitors around the town, genuinely every conversation with a local went like this:

Mr Oldhammer: That’s an interesting accent. Are you from America?

Americans: That’s right. We’re here for a visit.

Mr Oldhammer: Why on earth are you visiting here? Nobody wants to visit Oldham, and I don’t blame them!

Some form of this conversation was had ad nauseam. It sometimes went on a bit longer, with people really pushing hard on that ‘why’ question, failing to grasp why anybody would want to visit (to use their words) a dump like this.

You might wonder why I find that sort of attitude at all endearing. There is an annoying side to it (more on which in a minute), but I found it a breath of fresh air having spent the best part of the previous 10 years in places where the residents were very pleased with themselves and didn’t mind letting you know it. It was refreshing to be somewhere that was a little more honest about the realities of where they live and less inclined to harp on endlessly about its greater glories, less in a sense of trying to affirm it to you so much as to give the impression they were trying to convince themselves.

The more annoying side to this attitude stems from a broader  deprived-place attitude. Namely, things are bad and nothing will ever get better. That is the default position. Whilst it stops locals wanging on about the unerring awesomeness of the town in the most grating way, it makes them incredibly pessimistic and downbeat about any attempt to ever improve it. Everything is met with a glum: ‘what’s the point?’,  a resigned ‘nothing will ever change’ or a groundless ‘this is making everything worse’. It makes it very hard to make positive changes without misery breaking out everywhere. It is very hard for local groups – but perhaps especially the local council – to do anything that is well received and it is such a morale sapper to have every plan, no matter how well conceived and embarked on with great hope, destroyed within minutes of announcement online by people telling you what a waste of time it will be.

These respective attitudes present different challenges for the gospel. For more boosterish metropolitan cities, the challenge for the church is to present the gospel as something desperately needed in an area where most people think they are already (practically) dwelling in Promised Land. In cities like Liverpool and Manchester, areas where the middle classes have increasingly congregated, the challenge is to present the need of the gospel for those who have (relatively) little need of anything and are used to meeting most of life’s challenges with their own resources.

For the left-behind post-industrial satallite towns, the challenge for the church is to present the gospel as a genuine source of hope to people who find hope in short supply and cannot believe anything better will ever arrive. In places like Oldham, the church has to present the gospel of Jesus Christ as a greater hope. If various political parties running the local council have failed, schools have not always worked, local interest groups of varying kind have popped up only to die off as quickly as they came, why should anybody view the gospel as any more reliable and why should we place our hope any more in it? Those who have had their fingers repeatedly burnt by the self-professed bringers of hope are not necessarily going to immediately jump onto the hope of the gospel. We have to give them reasons to both see and believe that the hope offered through Jesus Christ is of a different, and vastly better, kind.