Gospel and Culture: churches as meeting places

In 'Gospel and Culture: churches as meeting places' at St Andrew's Wickford today we explored the image of churches as estuaries. 

We recorded as much of the event as it was possible for us to do on the day but were unable to record every session. Recordings of sessions from the day can be viewed here (Sam Wells), here (Paul Carr), and here (myself). 

Estuaries, where salt water mixes with fresh in a confluence of river and tidal waters, are environments of preparation where, for example, young salmon, striped bass, and other fish come downstream after hatching.

Churches that regard themselves as meeting places of human and divine, gospel and culture, timeless truth and embodied experience, word and world, are functioning as estuaries. Creating cultural estuaries in churches happens when the creative capital of an artist, the social capital of a pastor or community leader, and the material capital of finance or business, converge.

We explored these ideas with:

• Revd Dr Sam Wells (Vicar of St Martin-in-the-Fields);
• Revd Paul Carr (Team Rector, Billericay and Little Burstead Team Ministry); 
• Nicola Ravenscroft (Sculptor); 
• Sarah Rogers (HeartEdge); and 
• Revd Jonathan Evens (Team Rector, Wickford and Runwell Team Ministry)

The programme included:

• Keynote speech – Revd Dr Sam Wells
• Engaging cultural offers – Paul Carr & Sarah Rogers in conversation with Jonathan Evens
• Engaging with artists – Nicola Ravenscroft in conversation with Jonathan Evens
• ‘Controversy and conversation: Art and churches’ – Jonathan Evens

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Woven Hand - Good Shepherd.