Some stories remind me of Lewis Carroll’s famous story of ‘Alice Through the Looking-Glass’. If you remember she discovered a fantastical world in which she found things are reversed as in a mirror’s reflection.

Logic for example is reversed so that running helps us to remain stationary and walking away from something brings us closer to it.

She certainly met some fascinating characters while she was there. There were the severe Red Queen and the flustered White Queen for example, and who could ever forget those quarrelsome twins, Tweedledee and Tweedledum who agreed to have a battle but never actually have one.

If the reports I have read are true Pastor Mick Fleming didn’t meet any of these fascinating characters, but he did have an encounter with a policeman recently that reminded me of Carroll’s literary masterpiece.

Mick, who turned his back on a life of crime and founded ‘Church on the Street’ in Burnley after experiencing homelessness himself has given away his possessions to buy a second-hand motorhome to reach out to the most vulnerable and ‘take his ministry to the streets’. He’s an inspirational character whose work has featured on Songs of Praise and received recognition from the Prince of Wales.

But at the end of October Pastor Mick met a police officer too who apparently warned him that the Bible verse displayed on the back of his campervan could be considered ‘hate speech’ in the wrong context and if someone complained police would investigate it and he could "end up in trouble".

I was delighted to read that the policeman was a ‘really nice guy’ and wanted Mick to know that he was merely giving him a piece of advice, but it got me wondering why a police officer - or anyone else for that matter - could think like that. It’s one of the best-known verses in the entire New Testament. You will find it in the third chapter of John’s gospel where we see Jesus telling a Jewish leader that God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son so that anyone who believes in Him will not perish but enjoy everlasting life.

So why would a police officer warn him that this particular verse could be considered hate speech in certain contexts? I need to know because I often quote it. On reflection I’ve come to the conclusion that Pastor Mick must have gone through the Looking-Glass and entered the same bizarre world as Alice.

No one has to believe John 3:16. Faith is a personal choice and a choice that is open to people of every culture, language and nation. Even more importantly it’s a verse that stresses how much God loves us and the lengths He will go to prove it. All of this has made me think that I ought to write a book about ‘The Pastor Through the Looking-Glass’.