Living God's Future Now - w/c 5 September 2021

'Living God’s Future Now’ is our mini online festival of theology, ideas and practice.

We’ve developed this in response to the pandemic and our changing world. The church is changing too, and - as we improvise and experiment - we can learn and support each other.

This is 'Living God’s Future Now’ - talks, workshops and discussion - hosted by HeartEdge. Created to equip, encourage and energise churches - from leaders to volunteers and enquirers - at the heart and on the edge.

The focal event in ‘Living God’s Future Now’ is a monthly conversation where Sam Wells explores what it means to improvise on God’s kingdom with a leading theologian or practitioner.

The online programme includes:

• Regular weekly workshops: Biblical Studies (Mondays fortnightly), Sermon Preparation (Tuesdays) and Community of Practitioners (Wednesdays)
• One-off workshops on topics relevant to lockdown such as ‘Growing online communities’ and ‘Grief, Loss & Remembering’
• Monthly HeartEdge dialogue featuring Sam Wells in conversation with a noted theologian or practitioner

Find earlier Living God’s Future Now sessions at https://www.facebook.com/pg/theHeartEdge/videos/?ref=page_internal.

This Week

Biblical Studies class, Monday 6 September, 19:30-21:00, Zoom meeting. Register in advance: https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZMrcOmgrTgsHt2ceY7LepLhQYqQxS1G1ix9.  Gospels & Acts: Lecture 17 The what, why and where of the Fourth Gospel. With Rev Simon Woodman, Minister, Bloomsbury Central Baptist Church.

Sermon Preparation Workshop, Tuesday 7 September, 16:30 (BST), livestream. Join here https://www.facebook.com/theHeartEdge. Discussion of preaching and the lectionary readings for the coming Sunday with Sam Wells and Sally Hitchiner. 

Community of Practitioners workshop, Wednesday 8 September, 16:00 (BST), Zoom. Email jonathan.evens@smitf.org to register. A gathering for church leaders, lay and ordained, with opportunities for reflection on experience and theology.

Living God's Future Now conversation – Ben Quash: Thursday 9 September, 18:00 – 19:00 BST. Register for a Zoom invite at https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/myevent?eid=162702913795. At 6.00 pm (GMT) on Thursday 13 May 2021, Sam Wells and Ben Quash will be in conversation to discuss how to improvise on the kingdom. Ben Quash is fascinated by how the arts can renew people’s engagement with the Bible and Christian tradition, and is directing a major 7-year project to create an online Visual Commentary on Scripture.

Called to the Feast art workshop: Friday 10 September, 16:30-18:00, zoom. Register at https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/called-to-the-feast-art-workshop-tickets-164816778421. This pre-conference workshop for (Still) Calling from the Edge, the 10th annual conference on disability and Church in partnership between St Martin-in-the-Fields and Inclusive Church, will help create an exhibition of images and words for an inclusive Last Supper.

Theology Group: Sunday 12 September, 19:00 (BST). Register at https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/theology-group-tickets-167228024523. A monthly opportunity to reflect on issues of today and questions of tomorrow together with Sam Wells. 

Check out

Recordings from our Mission Summer School and also Telling Encounters: Stories of Disability, Faith, Church & God 2020 are now available.

The Mission Summer School was a week aimed at practitioners wanting to engage more deeply with the theology of mission and explore how it relates to their own practice. Also for those already studying, providing an opportunity to be immersed in the theology and practice of mission. Register at https://bit.ly/3sTjSYT for the opportunity to access recordings from the Mission Summer School (£10 fee).

Telling Encounters: Stories of Disability, Faith, Church and God was our 9th annual conference on disability & church in partnership between St Martin in the Fields & Inclusive Church. Recordings of sessions from the conference can be viewed here.

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Telling Encounters - Path Through the Woods.

Windows on the World and Path through the Woods

Telling Encounters was a day-long conference in 2020 on the stories of disabled and neurodivergent people, hosted for the first time online in partnership with HeartEdge via Zoom. The theme of ‘Telling Encounters’ centred on the stories and experiences of disabled and neurodivergent people in how we encounter God, including ministry as disabled and neurodivergent people, and encounters since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic and subsequent lockdowns since March 2020. Click here for recordings from the conference. Register for the 2021 conference here.

As part of the conference I organised an online exhibition and art workshop for the conference. The online exhibition uses photographs, drawings, paintings, poems and prose to describe what we see and the window we look through. This could be an actual window in our homes or our particular frame / perspective / experience e.g. as wheelchair user, voice hearer etc. Much thanks to Rachel Noel for putting the exhibition film together. I'm organising another exhibition for this year's conference. Join me this Friday for the preparatory workshop - register here.  

One of my poems, together with poems by Conor Brownlee, Fiona MacMillan and Naomi Lawson Jacobs, was included in an original piece of music generated as part of the conference.

Here are earlier art and disability videos from earlier projects at St Martin-in-the-Fields with which I have been involved. In the first, artists and craftspeople from the congregation speak about their ‘Hidden St Martin’s’ exhibition for the 2016 Patronal Festival. The exhibition reflects on the theme from a variety of different perspectives using ceramics, drawings, films, paintings, photographs, text and textiles. The exhibition was in November 2016.

The second is of vox pop interviews given by participants at Prophets & Seers: Calling from the Edge, the 2016 conference on Disability and Church, organised in partnership between St Martin-in-the-Fields and Inclusive Church. Participants shared their message to the Church.

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June Boyce-Tillman - We Shall Go Out.

Thought for the Week: On holy ground

Here's my Thought for the Week at St Martin-in-the-Fields:

The logo created to advertise Telling Encounters, this year’s Disability conference, features the burning bush. This story of Moses turning aside to see a bush that is burning and God telling him to take off his sandals for the ground he is standing on is holy, is also one of the readings for our Eucharist this week.

In the story Moses takes off his sandals because he realises that the ground on which he is standing is holy. Sometimes we may need to take off our sandals in order to realise that the ground on which we stand is holy.

I’m reminded of a sculpture by David Robinson called ‘On Holy Ground’ in which a suited and booted businessman stands on a globe with his feet bare and his shoes in his hands. Shoes are designed for movement and travel. We take our shoes off when we come to rest, to stop, to linger. That is what the businessman in sculpture has done and it is in those moments when our busyness ceases that we may realise that all the ground on which we stand is holy.

Rob Bell writes: "Moses has been tending his sheep in this region for forty years. How many times has he passed by this spot? … Has the ground been holy the whole time and Moses is just becoming aware of it for the first time? Do you and I walk on holy ground all the time, but we are moving so fast and returning so many calls and writing so many emails and having such long lists to get done that we miss it?" (R. Bell, Velvet Elvis, Zondervan, 2005)

So, as we reflect on Telling Encounters this autumn, let us remember the words of the folk singer Woody Guthrie: ‘Every spot on earth I traipse around / Every spot I walk it’s holy ground … Take off, take off your shoes / This place you’re standing, it’s holy ground.’

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The Klezmatics - Holy Ground.