Articles

• the art of starting out on a new mission journey… - Mon 31st December 2018 - … or, creating liminal spaces for those ‘outside the church’ My experience, working in the main with people who do not go to church, is that people are on all sorts of different stages of a faith journey. And they by no means follow a trajectory the zenith of which is church membership – or …

• The Hug Cullompton years: a concluding reflection - Wed 19th December 2018 - For the past nine years I have been tasked with exploring whether it is possible to ‘do’ church differently, in ways which are both true to the Reformed Tradition and contextually relevant in today’s world. The experiment, I am afraid to say, has proved inconclusive.  What has emerged from my ministry might be described as …

• Venturing into unknown spiritual territory - Tue 4th December 2018 - …or, a reflection on pioneering in a time of religious and social change A wise person once said that what marks out a pioneer is their ability to allow the Holy Spirit to guide them, then fill in a back story afterwards. That’s definitely me. From early on in this ministry I have been encouraged …

• Incarnation and divine experience: finding inspiration in the pages of the Bible - Thu 11th October 2018 - … or, why a load of words written thousands of year ago inspire me today. One of the currently in-vogue words among mission-type people is ‘incarnational’. Whenever it is used there is always lots of nodding.  For the first several years I heard it bandied around, the term troubled me. I wasn’t sure I truly …

• “For I received from the Lord what I also handed on to you…” - Wed 26th September 2018 - …or, the Biblical precedent for breaking bread together round a table Today, many churches are adopting table fellowship – or the practice of sharing food and drink round a table – as a way of attracting people to explore faith in Jesus.  One example is how this ideas is impacting the church is the Eating …

• Baptism: navigating the waters - Mon 20th August 2018 - … or, a simple guide to where Baptism comes from, what it is, and who can have it. Four years ago my partner in marriage and I had our baby ‘Christened’.  The event itself was one of immense joy, and lots of people came from around the country to celebrate and share the occasion with …

• A theology of touch - Tue 14th August 2018 - or, why Hug Cullompton hugs in the first place. The Bible tells us that humankind is created in the image of God (Gen. 1.26-27) .  We are embodied, an immortal soul housed in a temporary shell (2 Cor.5.1-5).  Like Adam and Eve in Genesis chapter 2, we are meant not to be alone, but to …

• Thinking again about ‘Worship and Mission’ - Tue 7th August 2018 - …or, being realistic in churches about what can be achieved. In Worship and Mission After Christendom (2011), Alan and Eleanor Kreider suggest that, until recently, the terms ‘Worship’ and ‘Mission’ were rarely used together as a single phrase. In Christendom times responsibility for ‘Worship’ was the job of professional clergy, created for a population who …

• Relocating church into ‘the thick of it’ - Mon 23rd July 2018 - Is there a difference between being ‘missional’ and ‘mission minded’? When I first heard the term ‘missional’, I thought it was a made-up word; one of those pieces of jargon that would have its day then fade away, much like a lot of trends. But the term is here to stay, and as time has …

• a theology of church based on love - Tue 26th June 2018 - The Bible passage Acts 2.42-47 provides an inspiring description of the way of life practised by the earliest Christians. There is a strong sense of mutuality, and the faith, hope and love of the believers is an example to everyone around them: Day by day, as they spent much time together in the temple, they broke bread …

• In the footsteps of Ezekiel… - Tue 19th June 2018 - … creating a mission methodology for emerging new church communities In September 2009, I sat down at my desk and tried to work out what I was going to do. I was the first official URC Pioneer, tasked with making sense of this new fangled concept ‘Emerging Church’.  It seems such a dated term now, …

• Communicating Christianity in a strange new world - Tue 12th June 2018 - Have you ever thought about the sheer strangeness of the church? As an institution it has so many particularities: the way its customs are practised, the terminology that is used, the many assumptions made about all sorts of things, from the beliefs one must have to the way furniture is placed.  While these things are …

• harsh realities or new opportunities? - Tue 5th June 2018 - Preparing to Re-imagine church for today’s culture The title ‘Pioneer Minister’ formalised a grass roots movement which had been emerging across different church traditions since the late 1990s. It was also a response to the publication of the Church of England’s ‘Mission Shaped Church’ report (2004). The report acknowledged the declining number of people in …

• Transforming Cullompton with a Hug - Tue 29th May 2018 - Pioneer Minister, the Revd Janet Sutton Webb tells how an emerging community’s discipleship has proved transformative in a mid-Devon market town. ‘Can we, in the United Reformed Church, do Church differently, in ways which are true to our Reformed tradition and appropriate for today’s context?’ That was the question I was tasked with answering when …

• Why inherited and new forms of church need each other - Tue 29th May 2018 - The writer of Ecclesiastes, observing the way of the world, states that… there is nothing new under the sun, and that all is vanity. It might be an accusation levelled at the Fresh Expressions initiative and other associated movements which have emerged over the past twenty years or so. Martyn Percy describes many of the …