First Flight Feathers: The best of worship live

Our writers are drawn from a variety of Christian traditions, and include a number who will be known to us through the Free Churches. Methodist hymnwriters, Andrew Pratt, and Marjorie Dobson were core members of the Worship Live editorial team and their vigorous, down to earth texts have become well-known and loved. Salvation Army officer, John Coutts' writing is full of gentle humour and compassion, while Sara Iles from the Congregational Federation leads us to the shelter of the Tree of Wisdom. There are some challenges too, with Graham Adams' take on 'Away in a manger': 'So dare we, then, follow? Dare we?', and Ruthie Thomas, the gospel singer/songwriter, wakes on Christmas morning, 'Crying for the children, crying for the world'.

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Life on the Breadline

Reflection from Revd Helen Cameron, Moderator of the Free Churches Group 

I was glad to be sent a link to the report from Coventry University sharing new research called ‘Life on the Breadline: Christianity, poverty and politics in the 21st century city’ in the form of a report for Church leaders in the UK.

 The report is available to read and download here.

 This has been written for Church leaders across the UK to support Christian responses to poverty and to develop more effective anti-poverty responses. Importantly, it is about Christians responding to poverty experienced by people of any or no faith, not simply Christians working with Christians.

 Life on the Breadline was a research project funded by the Economic and Social Research Council that from 2018 analysed the nature, scope, and impact of Christian engagement with poverty in the UK in the context of austerity. The research team combined three theologians (two of whom are former colleagues of mine) – Dr Chris Shannahan (project lead), Professor Robert Beckford, and Professor Peter Scott – with Dr Stephanie Denning as a social scientist, and it has been the most in-depth empirical theological analysis to-date of poverty in the UK. The research included interviews with over 15 national church leaders in the UK, an online survey with over 100 regional church leaders, and six case studies with Christians responding in differing ways to poverty in London, Birmingham, and Manchester.

On the project web-site you can find the report and as well a toolkit for churches, an anti-poverty charter and an austerity time-line, a Lent course written for 2022 but adaptable for Lent 2024. In addition to these resources, there will be further resources published later this year for theological colleges, for students to engage with as part of their ministerial formation.

The Church, with its provision of foodbanks and warm spaces in cities, towns and villages, has become an increasingly important player in the societal response to the challenges of poverty and continued austerity. This social capital possessed by the Church might be harnessed further if the Church took its vocation as prophetic community more seriously. The report contains a powerful challenge to consider government austerity as not just a political process but also “a form of social sin requiring a deliberate, direct, political and theological response”. The relationship between the Church and politics is a contested one: the report suggests that “political theology is integral to the prophetic mandate of the Church”. We are invited to critical reflection “to confront and overturn unjust policy, which leads to or maintains impoverishment”.

The report writers and researchers suggest that the development of A Kairos document Against Poverty could help church leaders “to develop a holistic, systemic and intersectional theology of poverty in the way that the 1985 Kairos document confronted the injustice of the church’s response to South African Apartheid and enabled an articulation of a theological and practical commitment to liberation by the Church.

There is clearly a range of different approaches and modes of engagement adopted by a variety of churches and Christian NGOs. These are identified in the research as “caring”, “campaigning”, “advocacy”, “social enterprise” and “self help” approaches but these kinds of engagement are not closed and several approaches might be deployed by the same Church at the same time. Two case studies highlighted, Hodge Hill in Birmingham and Inspire in South Manchester highlighted a distinctive approach of “long-term incarnational solidarity and an asset-based community development approach”.

Participants in case studies and a number of Church leaders who were interviewed highlighted two examples of Jesus challenging poverty. In Mark 12:30-31 Jesus summarises the Commandments and called his hearers to, “love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind and all your strength..” and “Love your neighbour as yourself”. Participants also identified Matthew 25: 31-46 as a key text where Jesus suggests that when people feed the hungry, welcome the stranger and clothe the naked they welcome, feed and clothe Christ himself.

How such approaches undo or address and transform social injustices in order that our caring does not leave systemic poverty untouched needs to be a challenge to us all. The report suggests that the Church, so far, may have left the causes of poverty unmet.

So, how might the Free Churches Group, with a wide and diverse membership reflect together on this challenge? Among us we have quite a range of responses to poverty, differing theologies of poverty and ecclesiologies.

How might our different voices, all of them, be heard in the public square?

How might we overcome our hesitancy to work together for proactive action for social change? Who might we work with collaboratively – wider networks such as the Joint Public Issues team, Church Action on Poverty, the Poverty Truth Network, the Trussell Trust or Citizens UK, the Breadline team?

I am grateful to the authors of the report for sending the link to the report my way. I continue to reflect on their invitation as to how God’s preferential option for the poor might be translated by local churches and by denominations into “contextualised responses to poverty that are characterised by an ethic of empowerment, affirmation and solidarity”.

Revd Helen Cameron 

Moderator of the Free Churches Group

Images from Aaron Doucett on Unsplash and Life on the Breadline website.

Free Churches Group, Health and Social Care Chaplains Study Day

Moral Injury, Staff Support and Looking After Ourselves

Free Churches Group, Health and Social Care Chaplains Study Day

27 Tavistock Square, London WC1H 9HH

Tuesday June 20th 10:30 to 15:30

Cost: £15 for chaplains whose denomination is a member of the Free Churches Group

 £25 for all other chaplains

Please register your place HERE.

09:45 doors open

10:30 to 11:15 Session one – Introduction to Moral Injury [Katie]

11:25 to 1210 Session two – Supporting Health and Social care staff to Navigate their way Through MI. [Diana]

12:10 to 13:05 Lunch (provided)

13:10 to 13:50 Session three – How we set up staff support work at G&ST [Tracy]

13:55 to 14:40 Session four – Sharing Good Practice [input from the panel and attendees]

15:00 to 15:30 Session five –Self-care and Creative Reflection [Bob]

15:30 cake and conversation for those who want to stay for a little bit extra

The focus of the day will very much be about lived experience rather than academic discussion. A well as the examples that the presenters will share we want to draw on the knowledge of those attending so please do think about examples of good practice from your context that you’d be happy to share in session four. If you have questions you’d like to ask both the presenter and those attending you can email them in advance to Mark at mark.newitt@freechurches.org.uk

A CPD certificate for 4 hours will be available at the end of the day.

Presenter Biographies

Tracy Morgan is originally from New Zealand. She trained as a health care chaplain in 2018 and works at Guy's & St Thomas' NHS Foundation Trust. First working in Paediatrics and acute adults, Tracy joined the dedicated staff support chaplaincy team that was formed in response to the Covid 19 pandemic in November 2021.

Diana Steadman worked in education and guidance before training in pastoral ministry at Spurgeon’s College. She is currently serving as Staff Wellbeing Chaplain at Kingston Hospital NHS Trust where from 2017 she has been establishing the role working alongside a Physiotherapist, Clinical Psychologist and Mind-Body Practitioner as part of an in-house Staff Wellbeing Team. Diana is now responsible for creatively supporting and advocating for the pastoral needs of staff within Unplanned Care, harnessing the tools of reflective practice, pastoral supervision, coaching and other development activities, and by reporting into divisional progress and Trust-wide steering group meetings.

Katie Watson is Head of Chaplaincy at Newcastle upon Tyne Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust. She has served there for 15 years. Prior to this she was a Military Police Officer in the British Army with operational experience in Bosnia and Croatia during the early 90s and Northern Ireland during the conflict. She runs ultra distance trails and does so that cake can be a major factor in her diet.

Bob Whorton is retired from Healthcare Chaplaincy but continues to work as a reflective supervisor. His interests are in creativity, writing, embodiment and the use of the imagination.

Note: If you are a Free Church Healthcare Chaplain, please contact Thandar at thandar.tun@freechurches.org.uk for a discounted price. The member denominations list is available to view here.

Photo by Dim Hou on Unsplash

‘Does government do God?’

Colin Bloom’s Independent Faith Engagement Review: ‘Does government do God?’ has been published today. You can find a link to the review here, and the press notice issued by the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities here.

The review considers government’s engagement with faith, people of faith and places of worship across a broad range of themes including faith literacy across public services, faith in education, prisons and the probation service, the UK Armed Forces, faith-based extremism, financial and social exploitation, and forced marriage.

More than 21,000 people responded to the public consultation and today Colin Bloom has set 22 recommendations for government to consider. The key messages are that faith is an ‘overriding force for good’ and government needs to improve its engagement with these groups, and that a better understanding of faith will help government tackle systematic issues including forced marriages, child safeguarding and extremism.

It is important to note that this review is independent and does not represent UK government policy. Government will consider the findings and will respond in due course.

Hello I'm

Hello I’m… Janelle Kingham

(Janelle is a member of the Steering Committee and one of the FCG representatives on the Network for Pastoral, Spiritual, and Religious Care in Health)

Hello, I’m Rev Janelle Kingham, Lead Chaplain at George Eliot Hospital NHS Trust, a district general acute hospital in Northern Warwickshire. Let me begin by saying, I cannot imagine not being a hospital chaplain. But - to be honest, I had no real intentions of ever becoming a Chaplain, much less a Lead Chaplain. I left high school, fully intending to become a nurse, then a medic. I loved the idea of medicine and that it could help people when they needed it most. I started on that road.

As life never seems to keep us on a straight path, I left my intended undergraduate degree course in nursing after half a year and ended up via a winding road doing my undergraduate honours degree in theology at a university in Toronto, Canada, fully intending to become a Pentecostal pastor in the Pentecostal Assemblies of Canada.

It was after I graduated, slightly disillusioned with church politics, that I came to the UK for just 10 months. I left the hustle and bustle of a large Canadian city and moved to the Midlands. I had no idea what would come next.

Those ten months turned into four and a half years of working for my local church in the Midlands. It was here that I reconciled my passion for full-time ministry and went through ordination with the Assemblies of God Great Britain. During those years I met my husband, and we settled. Again, the winding road took a turn I never anticipated – redundancies were impending, I knew in my heart God was pushing me into something new.

Waiting for what felt like no-man’s land, a random conversation with a family member ended me up in a large acute hospital in Coventry for three and a half hours, where I experienced what hospital chaplaincy was; I did a few visits with the then Lead Chaplain and then he was called to ITU. He looked at me and said, “Are you up for this?” and I blindly said, “Sure. Let’s go.” I didn’t tell him I wasn’t really a fan of hospitals – in any way, shape, or form. This afternoon was a one-off punt.

I spent the next two hours with a family in ITU as the mother and wife passed into eternity, and experienced being the space-holding, compassionate humanity that is chaplaincy. Somehow, and I know this to be God now, this was part of helping a father and his two sons begin to reconcile all that had just happened and the new life that lay before them.

As I walked out of that ITU, I can still remember the exact tile I was standing on when I felt God speak to me and say, “This is where I want you now.” So, I kept going back. First as a volunteer, then as an employee when the opportunity arose. It was after seven and a half years at that Trust that I moved to my current Trust and continue to feel the call of God to sit in the mud of life with people and continue taking the ‘punt’ that God will always show up when I need Him most. And you know what? He always does. I suspect He always will.