Featured Conversations
Webinar- Renewing the Covenant: Churches and the Building of Local Relationships
We have become aware that we are a society shaped by individualism, relating in ways that are often transactional rather than relational. We quickly default to a language of outcomes in our dealings with one another. These ways of relating could be characterized as contract. Webinar panellists wonder, in this context, with this limitation and loss, how may we recover a sense of the sanctity of human life and relationships.
Webinar- Preparing for a New Chapter: Revitalizing the Christian Imagination for the Sake of the Common Good
We are social beings and the paradox of the moment is that our isolation is driving a natural desire for connection with others. We need to strengthen our civic immune system and the church can offer a diagnosis. And the Church can offer a practice: Catholic Social Thought, with its concept of the common good...
Read more and watch the video of the webinar (30th April 2020)
Webinar- From Exile to Earthquake: Metaphors for Mission in a Post-Pandemic World
The context of this conversation, as Alan Roxburgh explains, is the Covid-19 crisis and the question from church leaders and others: ‘What’s next?’ In the light of this Alan and Martin Robinson reflect on the metaphors leaders have used to understand mission and the place of the church...
Two Pastors Talking: ‘So How Do You Hear God?’
Although Joseph Omoragbon and Fred Liggin are church pastors, both see their primary role to be that of missionary to their community. In most other ways they are different. Fred is a white American working in Southern United States. Joseph is a Nigerian immigrant, a pastor and church planter with the Redeemed Christian Church of God, serving in North East England... This video conversation explores how they both hear the call of God.
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Webinar: Beyond the Billboard
Sally Mann and Alan Roxburgh lead this conversation which keeps a hopeful focus on what God is doing Beyond the Billboard. The billboard is a manufactured thing, a commodity, and it may mask a beautiful view beyond. Sally and Alan wonder if we have tended to treat our churches and our faith as a kind of billboard. There are brands and programmes and ideas, but...
Beyond the Billboard 1: How do we talk about this?
Sally Mann, JMP Editorial Board Member, in conversation with Alan Roxburgh around crumbling ecclesial structures and the billboard metaphor. What is the new language we can use about this strange hopeful space we are in? How do we begin to give language to our own roles in this new space? In this conversation, context and community emerge as two keys to the answers.
Beyond the Billboard 2: What about leadership?
Sally Mann and Alan Roxburgh continue to discuss mission and church "beyond the billboard". They wonder what church leadership may look like in our radically new and changing contexts. Sally proposes some challenging practices which may help a church leader take on a more open posture within the community.
Beyond the Billboard 3: Acts 16 and Finding Lydia
Sally Mann and Alan Roxburgh continue their conversation about mission and church 'beyond the billboards'. They remember Acts 16 and the story of Lydia 'outside the walls' and wonder who Lydia is for us today. Lydia will not walk into our churches, but God is at work within her. When we do engage with her new ways of thinking about church will emerge. But Sally warns that this newness will often emerge among the poor and that in itself may be challenging.
The Common Good and Catholic Social Teaching
Anna Rowlands is a political theologian at Durham University and a community organizer with Citizens UK. Anna explains the concept of ‘the common good’ which has its origins in Catholic Social Teaching. She indicates how its principles may help reconcile differing views of the common good. Her example is the current political challenge of mass migration but it is possible to see how these principles could help as we seek to find a 'common good' with our neighbours in our localities.
A conversation with Lord Glasman and some reflections
The opening question posed by Martin revolved around the simple observation that communities, societies and even nations are having difficulty in finding ways to hold the centre ground. There seems to be a fracturing and a dividing of communities, people groups, ethnicities, cultures and identities as fear of the “other” grows. So, in those circumstances how does the centre hold and how do we create ways of living together that speak of creative connections as compared with fearful withdrawal?
Read more and watch the video interview
Reflection- video conversation between Martin Robinson and Alan Roxburgh