Stories
Building Trust: How Come You Guys Don’t Give Up On Us?
The redeveloped building centred around a coffee bar, a worship area and a series of rooms that could be used by the community for activities as diverse as a food bank, a ladies pamper night and, under TLG, a school for excluded children. Much of this activity has produced good relationships with many in the community that have struggled with life and finding their place in the broader society. Some of these folk...
Following the Spirit, Finding Life, Sharing Bread
In this video interview with Alan Roxburgh, Fred Liggin recalls when his church took up listening practices among the elders and then the congregation and at the same time, began walking with a homeless family who went on to flourish within their community. Eighteen other faith groups in the city became interested in this way of working and across the city...
A Latino experience of place in the USA: the difference race makes.
As the child of Guatemalan missionaries Jennifer Guerra Aldana has had to negotiate issues of race and displacement. She now serves as pastor in a bilingual congregation. In a video interview with Alan Roxburgh she describes how in her ministry they seek to hold the tension of an inter-cultural approach which values insights from the juxtaposition of cultures. In the light of this, Alan Roxburgh introduces the conversation about a theology of place and his growing awareness that this conversation sometimes makes assumptions based on white privilege...
Re-imagining church and mission in the Scottish borders
The first year was to be a year of listening to the community. What was God up to in this neighbourhood? That was not an easy discipline for Alistair who was something of an activist and could easily frame what he might do in this situation. The point of the year of listening was to ask questions and particularly to gain a sense of the spiritual journeys that people were engaged in. Year two saw Alistair and Ruth initiating a gathering – the Gateways Gathering. This gathering responded ...
Sacred Space
Andrea Campanale, with other local Christians set up ‘Sacred Space’ as a way to reach spiritual seekers in their town. They organized artistic events which had the potential to open up questions of faith and Andrea learned a form of Christian ‘card reading’, which made a way into faith conversations. In conversation with Martin Robinson and Mary Publicover Andrea used the language of ‘space’ (Sacred Space) to describe the opportunities they created for talk and listening and, she felt, divine encounter.
The Bayview Webinar: The Long Journey into Neighborhood.
Danny Fong is founding pastor of a church plant in San Francisco, in The Bayview neighborhood. He describes this, in his conversation with Mark Lau Branson, as one of the abandoned places of the empire. It has long been a community of migrants and a place of poverty and racial tension. Danny’s church planting team had first felt a call towards the neglected fringes of the city fifteen years ago, but as a community of Chinese-Americans, had been warned away...
The Bayview Webinar: Discerning God in the local economy
Danny Fong and other directors of their technology company were sensitive to the labor issues of the Bayview district and the poverty of opportunity for young people. Three years ago, they opted to move their business into the neighborhood and to share their space with the church. The principal of the business, Chi-Ming Chien, took a sabbatical. Walking the streets, he noted signs of activity but also abandoned premises...
Life on the Margins: The Saturday Gathering in Halifax
Linda is a minister, an Anglican priest, based in Halifax, Yorkshire, a town which has areas of high deprivation. She is curate of two congregations in this town, and also co-leads Saturday Gathering, a Saturday evening church which emerged from a Food and Support Drop-In and other services. In conversations with Martin Robinson and Mary Publicover Linda reflects on some of the challenges of this ministry, and her dependence on God to find a way through.
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...
Housing and Shalom in the New Commons
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...