Featured Articles
The Politics of Grace and Place: A Letter to the Local Church. Third letter.
There is a political dimension to the local church’s vocation. Not in a party political or campaigning sense, but rather in its call to transform civil society. Though we aim to be servants, churches are more than service providers and - though we strive to be faithful witnesses - we are called to be more than evangelists. Our belief is that God is leading us to deepen our relationship with people, and with place.
Renewing the Covenant: Churches and the Building of Local Relationships. Second letter.
We are convinced that there is another story. There is within the memory of the church a story of being a people who do not need to be shaped by social contract, consumerism and individualism. Our vocation is rooted in the reality of Christ living in us and, therefore, by God's relationship with us. We know that apart from him we can do nothing. Covenant, not contract...
The Plague and the Parish: An Invitation to the Churches. First letter.
Pope Francis said last year that we are not living through an era of change but a change of era. We are entering a new chapter in the history of the world, and of the church, so we offer you this letter which is a call for the church to renew its vocation as a sign and foretaste of the kingdom of God. Read, listen and consider this call. Share with us...
A Framework for ‘What’s Next?’: Re-rooting in the Christian Story.
The issue builds on the overarching question of ‘What’s Next?’ It proposes that the proper response is a re-engagement with the West’s Christian narrative, a re-rooting of life in the Christian story. The issue then builds on this overarching proposal through an examination of what this re-rooting might mean. It engages three themes...
Editorial: Place, Time and Identity
This issue of JMP has focused on the meaning of place in contemporary societies and its implications for the life and witness of Christian communities. Each of us, as we read this, are situated in some place – our home, work place, local coffee shop, etc., that locates and gives shape to our everyday lives. We have learned through this issue that the places where we dwell are complicated geographies that in our late modern contexts, raise complex questions...
The Fragility of Goodness: Brexit Viewed from the North East
Perched on a stool at the end of the bar, just beneath an enormous screen showing Britain's Got Talent for those whose interests quite understandably lay elsewhere, I gave a talk on the way that Catholic social thought provides resources for thinking about the current migrant crisis. It was an evening when I was (unsurprisingly) cheered and heckled in equal measure: political theology as a fittingly extreme sport. At the end of my talk I suggested to the crowd...
Book Review: ‘Between the World and Me’ by Ta-Nehisis Coates.
Ta-Nehisi Coates is a self-proclaimed atheist who rejects the Christian God, and yet his book, Between the World and Me, is what happens when God draws the curtains to unveil the evil of racism that prevails across the world. This book is a critical social commentary on life in the United States that should inform every conversation concerned with mission in places that live with racial and economic oppression.
Reflection: A Remainer’s Perspective on Mission and Moving
At one time mission meant moving; sending, exile and crossing cultural boundaries inferred physical journeys. The ‘sent out’ were the pioneers. Today, the ‘remainers’ in the inner city beg to differ. My family have lived in the same four streets...
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Reclaiming the Commons: What it is and Why it’s Important.
An understanding that all of creation is God’s shapes Scripture. There is a deep, fundamental covenant that human beings hold the creation as a gift for all and ensure that every human being is cared for with dignity and honor. This is about the common good. As stated in the Jeremiah passage, it is part of the vocation of God’s people to seek the welfare of the city in which we abide. Connected to this basic framing of Christian vocation is the critical question of how it can be practiced. At one level the challenges confronting Western societies are immense...
The Editorial Think Tank: A Reflection on Two Meetings
The Journal of Missional Practice was born out of a common interest in the work of Lesslie Newbigin, the attempt of the Gospel and Our Culture programme to produce a wider debate about mission in the West, and the subsequent development of what has become known as ‘the missional conversation’. To help the Journal frame those concerns the principle participants have been joined each year by some additional friends and colleagues who together form an editorial Think Tank that offers both a critical and a constructive edge…