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...

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Vancouver housing has become so expensive that only the very rich can afford to live in a private home. About a quarter of the city have a more insecure existence in social housing, or for some, on the street or in shelters. These populations do not naturally mix. Tim Dickau, Joy Banks and Mark Glanville are ministers at Grandview Calvary Baptist Church and describe how their church has sought to be part of reshaping the city by living into signs of Shalom...

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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...

Michael Volland’s reflections[1] on the Bonny Downs story[2] are a helpful framing of important issues we’re all seeking to engage in our current contexts. He rightly teases out the tensions between how we are God’s ‘sent’ people for whom the...

Church planter Dan White has an appreciation for the ways in which Euro-tribal, evangelical churches and their leaders remain deeply enmeshed in rationalisms, techniques, notions of success and power that so deeply infect Christian life on this continent. In the early chapters he dives into these issues. He travels a road many of us have taken by pointing out these captivities in order to show their inadequacy. The hope is that readers will see this and, in so doing, want to travel with him...

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In a hopeful conversation on video Alan and Tim describe their impression of a widespread desire in western culture for a healing of our common life. Our communities are not thriving but there is a generative movement which is quite new. Alan and Tim name two great challenges for this good concern...

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In the early 1900s Pastor Howe, a new graduate from Spurgeons Bible College stumbled upon a tiny slum estate attached to the gas works in London’s East End. He chose to move in to Bonny Downs and set up a mission in the midst of that poverty. One of the new Christians on that estate was a young girl called Rose Tribley whose grandchildren and great grandchildren are still there, leading a remarkable missional community in an area which still suffers deprivation. Rose Tribley’s granddaughters Angie Allgood and Sally Mann tell their story of ‘staying’ in two video interviews with Martin Robinson.

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Invitation to participate

Prompts for reflection: the Bonny Downs story

Reflection: 'Visiting Bonny Downs' by Martin Robinson

Reflection: 'The Pilgrims of Bonny Downs' by Michael Volland

'A Response to Michael Volland's Reflection' by Alan Roxburgh

Reflection: 'A Remainers Perspective' by Sally Mann

My family moved to our neighbourhood three years ago and began the work of connecting and making our home here. It has been a slow and humbling time. I have been confronted with my own agendas and baggage - a need to be someone who comes to help, start something, improve life and offer my own ‘awesomeness’ to the street. I have had to (and continue to) learn to slow down in order to show up, let myself be seen, let go of my agendas and be open and ready to participate in the common good as it is named by my neighbours. Following Jesus in my neighbourhood has me on a strange and disorienting journey in which I believe I am called to be a supporting cast member.

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The challenge to plant a church can lead us into some surprising places. When Viv Prescott was recruited to plant a church in the Forest of Dean, flexibility and listening was always part of the approach. Those who know anything about the area quickly realize that it combines astonishing natural beauty with demoralizing rural poverty. It is a poverty that saps strength and imagination, it depresses, damages self esteem and tends to encourage those with significant ability to leave the area and not return. That background has become part of the landscape that has shaped the way in which the small Christian community, sponsored by the Salvation Army, has taken shape in that place.

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When I arrived as vicar of Hodge Hill four and a half years ago, again and again congregation members asked me, ‘why on earth do you want to come here? We haven't even got a building!’...

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Rapid Response

Joshua T. Searle - A Rapid Response to 'Community Building as Spiritual Practice'