UN International Day of Peace: London Is Open

London Boroughs Faiths Network’s peace & reconciliation strand includes convening the London Peace Network, which marks the UN International Day of Peace each year.

Film-makers, artists, religious leaders and LBFN friends from across the capital are gathering today at 8.00am at St Martin-in-the-Fields for the premiere of a short film celebrating London’s places of worship – we are open and welcoming, not closed and fearful.

The film is inspired by the Mayor of London’s #LondonIsOpen series and will be shown at Southwark Cathedral later in the year in the presence of the Mayor. Churches, Islamic centres, temples, synagogues, meeting houses and gurdwaras will be open to guests during their times of worship or meeting on 23, 24 and 25 September – contact LBFN for details.

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The Children - Mother And Child.

Congratulations: Steven Saxby

Congratulations to Steven Saxby who has been appointed as Executive Officer to the London Churches Group with effect from 1 March. He will also remain as Priest in Charge of St Barnabas, Walthamstow, a church which is a member of London Citizens, active in the CitySafe campaign and a key member of Walthamstow Migrants Action Group. 

Steven has a strong record of social action, ecumenical and multi faith engagement that will stand him in good stead in his new role. This includes as Waltham Forest Faith Communities worker (2002-2003) and later line manager for his successors (2003-2007), developing the Faith Forum for Waltham Forest, serving on the Local Strategic Partnership and advising the local authority on faith matters since 2002. He also founded the London Boroughs Faiths Network in 2002, which is still going strong.

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Neil Young - Rockin' In The Free World.
 

Multi-Faith Spaces: Symptoms and Agents of Religious and Social Change

This Interactive Exhibition encapsulates the essence of the project: Multi-Faith Spaces: Symptoms and Agents of Religious and Social Change, a three year collaboration between the Universities of Manchester and Liverpool. It is founded upon thirty two key themes that emerged from a study of over two hundred multifaith spaces, in the United Kingdom and ten other countries.
 

The Venue: St Alphege Hall, Kings Bench St, London SE1 0QZ with the nearest tube being Southwark. Dates: July 9th, 10th, 11th and 13th, 11am – 4pm with workshops each day at 2.30pm, with refreshments.

 

Opening Event: Tuesday 10th July, 12.30pm – 2pm with Dr. Chris Hewson, Manchester University, Revd Dr. Howard Worsley, London South Bank University, and contributions from the NHS, Police and Prison services, with light refreshments being served.

 

Registration: Catriona Robertson, Convener LBFN. E: convener@lbfn.org. M: 07903 682 142. W: lbfn.wordpress.com. Entrance is FREE. Registration is required for opening event and workshops only.

 

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Ooberfüse - Heart's Cry.

Conversations and collaborations

"Our society is not simply secular; nor is it simply religious; it is both religious and secular in complex ways. If it is to work well there need to be huge numbers of conversations and collaborations across religious and secular boundaries." David Ford
I found the above quote in a post on the London Borough's Faiths Network blog and it encapsulates a large part of what I was trying to say last night as part of a visit to St John's Seven Kings by a group of ordinands and readers in training from St Mellitus College.

After describing to the group the multi-faith, multi-cultural and multi-ethnic context of our parish - as it contains significant Hindu, Sikh and Muslim communities together with a smaller Jewish community - I then talked them through some of the key arguments from the Church of England's Presence and Engagement report based on the recognition that  “the multi Faith context is now the real context in which a substantial and increasing number of parishes and proportion of the population actually live.”

“The report focuses on these churches and their contexts" - parishes like St John's Seven Kings - because they are increasing significantly and will extend further; because they represent many issues that are strikingly new for local churches in this country; and because they connect the local and the global in many sharply focussed ways.

Furthermore, the situation and experiences of these churches are important learning and teaching opportunities to be offered to the whole Church.”

The question which needs to be asked and answered in and through these parishes is, “in what ways is the Spirit calling churches and individuals to engage with the new diversities?” These parishes provide new opportunities for the learning and future of the Church in the UK, including:

“Opportunity to learn more about other human beings around us, especially those sincerely engaged in seeking God. Opportunity to present our Christian understandings of God by the lives we live and the words we speak. Opportunity to contribute to the common good and above all, opportunity to learn more about trusting in God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit.”

The words 'presence' and 'engagement' provide a framework for thinking through our approach to these opportunities. “The word ‘presence' points to our incarnational theology and the word ‘engagement’ to our pentecostal theology ... Presence can be largely passive, a simple acceptance that this is where we are, without any meaningful recognition of the relationship between our presence, the presence of others and the real presence of Christ who seeks constantly to bring human beings into relationship with each other in love. But the Spirit of God is constantly seeking to move us on from the fact of presence to the action of engagement – engagement as a public sign of our commitment to the wellbeing of the world and to the discovery of the Kingdom in the midst of the places where we are present.”

As a result of this thinking, we have sought to renew and further develop the community/outward facing focus at St John's Seven Kings. We have worked with the kingdom model of mission - God>World>Church - which can be summed up in Rowan Williams' phrase, "Mission is seeing what God is doing and joining in."  This model of mission starts with action and partnerships in the community, for the sake of the kingdom. Church is then for those who respond to the call to share in God’s transforming mission.

We have, therefore, promoted and developed the St John’s Centre as a centre for the community - 20+ community groups/activities and 100s of Centre users. We have also become actively involved in local community engagement – Take Action for Seven Kings / Seven Kings and Newbury Park Resident's Association / Living Streets campaigns for improved community facilities. We have also developed a Community Garden, as a visible sign that we are here and we are for the community.

On this basis, mission and ministry can be understood as inviting others to share in a conversation between God and humanity about the nature of life. Mission and ministry then become about identifying the conversations that people in the parish may want to start with God or into which they could be drawn and contributing to those conversations (through action, meetings, preaching, press coverage, projects etc) from a Christian perspective. The starting point is to ask ‘what are the conversation starters in my parish?’

The Bible is, as Jonathan Sacks, the Chief Rabbi, has said, the record of the dialogue in which God and humanity find one another: “Abraham says: God, why did you abandon the world? God says to Abraham: Why did you abandon Me? And there then begins that dialogue between Heaven and Earth which has not ceased in 4,000 years. That dialogue in which God and Man find one another … Only thus, can we understand the great dialogues between God and Abraham and Moses and Jeremiah and Job.”

Jesus says in John 8: 28 that he speaks just what the Father has taught him and in John 11: 42 that the Father always hears him. These two verses indicate that Jesus and the Father are in a constant dialogue or conversation. This understanding of God and mission is set out clearly in a translation of the prologue to John's Gospel, based on Erasmus' translation of logos as conversation, which I first came across in the Methodist Church report Time to Talk of God:

“It all arose out of a conversation, conversation within God, in fact the conversation was God. So God started the discussion, and everything came out of this, and nothing happened without consultation.

This was the life, life that was the light of men, shining in the darkness, a darkness which neither understood nor quenched its creativity.

John, a man sent by God, came to remind people about the nature of the light so that they would observe. He was not the subject under discussion, but the bearer of an invitation to join in.

The subject of the conversation, the original light, came into the world, the world that had arisen out of his willingness to converse. He fleshed out the words but the world did not understand. He came to those who knew the language, but they did not respond. Those who did became a new creation (his children). They read the signs and responded.

These children were born out of sharing in the creative activity of God. They heard the conversation still going on, here, now, and took part, discovering a new way of being people.

To be invited to share in a conversation about the nature of life was for them, a glorious opportunity not to be missed.” (John 1: 1-14 revisited)

This understanding of mission fits well with the HOPE Together initiative which asks us to imagine all over the country in communities large and small, churches working together, bringing Jesus’ story alive through word and action: “A new model of mission seems to have emerged across the UK in recent years combining words and actions, being good news as well as proclaiming good news … Grass roots collaboration between local churches served by national agencies allows the empowerment of Christians to serve their communities in ways which are appropriate to their situations.” The whole Church, for the whole Nation, for the whole year: An evaluation of HOPE08

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World Wide Message Tribe - We Talk to the Lord.

London Borough's Faiths Network

London Borough's Faiths Network (LBFN) is an informal network which links people who are actively engaged at the interface of London's faith communities and borough-level statutory bodies.

If you are responsible for engaging local religious groups on behalf of a local authority or other public sector body in London or if you are part of a local faith community or multi-faith group in London which is consulted by borough-based statutory bodies (eg borough council, police, health services), then this network is for you.

The network usually meets two or three times each year, sharing news and good practice from across Greater London. LBFN has just developed its own website with lots of useful information and links. To check it out click here.

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The Low Anthem - Cage the Songbird.