Articles
Proper Confidence: Being God’s people in a New Era
This is an anxious time across the churches when they must find a ‘proper confidence’ to guide their responses. This confidence, rather than in an immediate search for ecclesial survival, lies in our engagement with the mission of God. How will we reweave a future rooted in the mission of Jesus? What is our ‘proper confidence’ based in as we plan and act in this massive unravelling of church and society?
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 Retrospective Church
Paul shares his reflections on this question of a missionary engagement with Western culture and the role of the church from the perspective of his engagements with Acts 16. What was being made clear to Paul in this encounter with the text were the unexpected ways the Spirit continually prevents and invites...
A Christian Counter-Movement to Neoliberalism?
Recently I was sitting with friends on the back-deck when the topic of neo-liberalism came up. The conversation caused me reflect again about the Christian response to this massive social and cultural unravelling too many of us are experiencing. Why isn’t there a Christian counter movement for the protection of society from neo-liberalism?
Extending the Conversation
A Christian Counter Movement to Neoliberalism: A Rapid Response by Sally Mann
Further Thoughts on Christian Resistance by Alan Roxburgh
Looking for Hope … all over the place
Anniversaries are moments of pause looking back at the expectations with which one began a journey and checking out the realities of the present. This month is the anniversary of the 1968 May workers and student uprisings in Paris that spread across Europe and the Atlantic, creating for some governments the fear of revolution. These events were driven by a faith that...
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 parable of the mustard pot: the significance of ‘parish’ in contemporary mission and culture
Parochial Christianity resists modernity’s preference for separating ‘Christ’ and ‘culture’, embodying instead the New Testament idea that if anyone is ‘in Christ’, they already inhabit a new kind of place – the ‘heavenly’ place that Christians believe to be the world’s true destination. The vocation of the local church is thus to anticipate this new place in the midst of the old - and its principal testimony to the renewal all things will be the kind of ‘little world’ that it makes...
Lesslie Newbigin: Looking Forward in Retrospect
Sixteen years after the death of missionary bishop Lesslie Newbigin, Paul Weston offers a retrospective of his contribution to missionary theology and assesses his continuing relevance for the church’s mission to Western culture. He backs the view that Newbigin’s work...
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