Place
Indigenous Theology: There is no Healing Apart from the Land
Mark Macdonald explains that land is essential for healing, and also for the identity and resistance of indigenous people under the onslaught of western culture. For indigenous people the land is not inert. The Spirit infuses the land, there is personality, locality and unique relationship. Alan Roxburgh and Mark MacDonald go on the wrestle with the question of response. Christians must articulate their own ancient stories of land and people, but the time is short.
Indigenous theology and the urban landscape
In a fifth clip from this conversation Alan Roxburgh puts a challenge to Bishop Mark MacDoanld that concerns for land are not relevant for urban life, but are a mere expression of nostalgia. Mark counters with examples from Indigenous groups who have shown an appreciation for the gifts of urban life, or who choose to live in a way which is fiercely environmental.
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...
Place and mission from an African immigrant perspective
Alan Roxburgh and Harvey Kwiyani consider the underlying narratives of the African understanding of mission, place and the migration experience. What underlies their sense of call to kingdom life in this new place? Harvey explains that African culture generally is spirit-centred, so as Christians, Africans have a high expectation...
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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...
Reflection: A Remainer’s Perspective on Mission and Moving
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...
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Response to Michael Volland’s Reflections
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...
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Healing Our Common Life and the Role of the Churches
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...
A Deeply Rooted Missional Community in Bonny Downs
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.
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