Monthly Archives: April 2014
Context and Community – Editorial
Over the last few days, I have been re-reading Lesslie Newbigin’s book, Proper Confidence: Faith, Doubt and Certainty in Christian Discipleship. The book has prompted a memory of Newbigin’s lectures decades ago, when I heard these huge themes opened up...
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Dislocated: Naming the Crisis We All Create
This chapter, the first in the book The New Parish, explains how we lost our capacity to be the “local church” – a body of Christians learning to share life faithfully together in, with and for a particular place...
Rapid Response
Mike Pears - A Rapid response to ‘Dislocated’, Chapter 1 from The New Parish
Martin Robinson - A Rapid response to ‘Dislocated’, Chapter 1 from The New Parish
A Rapid response to ‘Dislocated’, Chapter 1 from The New Parish by Paul Sparks, Tim Soerens and Dwight J Friesen
Any book that helps the Christian community take a more thoughtful approach to place is, in my view, to be welcomed and by focusing on the idea of the ‘new parish’ Sparks, Soerens and Friesen draw attention to aspects of...
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A Rapid response to ‘Dislocated’, Chapter 1 from The New Parish by Paul Sparks, Tim Soerens and Dwight J Friesen
A few years ago, in the very early days of social media, I attended an impressive presentation from a pioneer in this field. As part of the presentation he invited subjects for debate from the audience and then presented these...
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Faith in the Public Square
Abstract Lord Glasman begins by organizing his thoughts around three key TMN concepts. Discerning our common good takes relationship and time. It has to be located in and with in our local communities. Forming happens inside a shared imaginative space that has been shaped...
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Together at God’s Table: How Practicing Hospitality Shapes Our Imagination
In the missional conversation, there has been a lot of talk about the need for a new imagination in the church but less attention to how imagination is actually formed and how we might get there. This paper will examine the bodily formation of imagination and will suggest that Jesus was on to something vital when he sent his disciples two by two to be hosted by Samaritans...
Rapid Response
A Rapid Response to ‘Together at God’s Table: How Practising Hospitality Shapes our Imagination’ by Jamie Wilson
It is a pleasure to respond to this interesting and insightful piece on the role of hospitality in shaping an imagination oriented to and shaped in relation to God’s reconciling mission in the world. Wilson invites the reader to consider...
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Leaving Eden
It was early September 1997, and as Britain was mourning the loss of its favourite Princess, I was moving into a far-from-palatial council house on a rather unsavoury street in south Manchester. At 24 years old I was actually one...
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Priests in the Borderlands
She came into the room carefully moving her pram, her very movements betraying her unfamiliarity with this new phase of life and its accoutrements. Her baby was asleep, tiny amidst the blankets, surely the youngest child here, and she the...
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The Saturday Gathering Story so far…
It all began with a food bank – the Halifax Food and Support Drop In. However, the aspiration was not only to give out food but also to build relationships that would draw people to Jesus. After a year of...
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