What are the perceptions of God and the church on an urban outer estate, and what are the implications for mission?

by Hayley Humphreys

Introduction

“We have a crisis,”¹ argued Bishop Philip North back in 2016. Church attendance is declining and nowhere is that more dramatically evident than in poor communities and on estates. More recently Bishop North outlined the stark news that “congregational decline in estates churches is four times the national average. Forty percent of applications for church closures are in the 10 percent most deprived communities.”² This is not a new phenomenon and was identified in the 1985 Faith in the City report. Despite this, much of the Church of England’s growth strategy and vision in recent decades has been to establish new churches in university towns by encouraging mobile middle-class Christians to relocate, reaching people like themselves.³ Estates are often stigmatised within the church and wider society. Lynsey Hanley, a journalist and writer who grew up on a council estate, describes estates as often forgotten-about corners of cities and towns that people do not travel to or through unless they have a reason to and are frequently described with negative connotations.⁴

This paper, and the research it is based on, challenges some of the assumptions and practices around estates and engages in deep listening among the often-marginalised voices within those estates. The research challenges the notion that working-class people are hard to reach and resistant to the gospel.⁵ I argue that it is through the kind of deep listening I undertake that the Church of England can build empathy and allow those voices to shape the church. Contrary to the typical portrayal of estates, I found residents who were open to God and fond of the church despite some of the barriers they face. In light of this, I argue that a prophetic dialogue approach to mission gives a better lens to understanding and engaging in mission as an estate parish.

Estate parishes are those identified as having 500 or more social housing units.⁶ I am currently employed as a pioneer in a Church of England estate parish and I am no stranger to estates. I was born on an outer-urban estate and as a family we experienced some of the difficulties that many people on estates face, including relative poverty, domestic abuse and addiction. Sadly, to this day, the Church of England church on the edge of that estate does little to engage with those who live there, mainly hosting events aimed at attracting a different demographic. Instead, it was the little missional church that engaged those in the town from a working-class background. I attended this church as a child and it is where I learned about Jesus through the lives, words and actions of church staff and volunteers. For the last 20 years I have been actively engaged in mission initiatives and Christian community engagement in areas with a high proportion of social housing.

The parish and the project

The estate where I now live and work comprises over 2,000 social housing units. Though there are many challenges, it is full of some of the most wonderfully resilient, brave and resourceful people I know. Nearly two years ago we started a listening exercise to hear from local people about the hopes and dreams they have for themselves, their families and the estate. We have continued to listen and discern what God might be doing in our community and consider how we might join in. This paper is based on my dissertation, which itself was a part of this deeper listening exercise.

The church is on an outer London borough estate, which was built in the 1930s by London County Council as an overspill estate for the rehousing of people from decaying inner London area. The church was built at that time. The current vicar arrived just after the pandemic and the Sunday service attendance had dwindled to approximately eight people. Apart from Sundays, the building was being used by groups such as Scouts and cheerleaders, but other than special services the groups generally had little overlap or connection to the worshipping community.

As a church, our prayer became, “May every inch of the building be used to the glory of God and the groups would not simply be just hall hirers.” Since then we have built connections with key people in the community. We host a weekly coffee drop-in that is attended by the local council and various community groups, each providing staff from these services once a month: GP advice, social prescribing services, benefits advice and family support. There is a community choir in partnership with the NHS and an exercise class sponsored by Sport England.

My research involved interviewing six participants, two men and four women, all residents on the estate where the church is located. All the names in this paper are pseudonyms to protect their identity. I chose the participants as they lived near the church, engaged fairly regularly in activities held at the church but were not regular attendees at Sunday church services. Qualitative researchers Braun and Clarke acknowledge that much scholarly research is dominated by the “usual suspects” who are the educated, white, middle-class straight people.⁷ My participants are deemed to be from the “hidden population” of those whose voices are not often heard. Using an ethnographic pastoral listening approach allowed me to recognise my position as someone who already lived and worked in the estate and to be attentive to those I was interviewing.⁸

Hearing the stories

When I asked my first question to my participants in this study, I was not wholly prepared for the responses I received. I was surprised at how much my participants willingly shared with me, opening up and baring all despite only having only known me a short while. They shared some harrowing and painful stories with candour and frankness. This level of trust and rapport, built in a short time, left me feeling extremely honoured and grateful. It also made me feel a huge weight of responsibility, to hold the treasure of what they had shared and to tell their stories in a way they did them justice and honoured them.

The participants had experienced acute levels of suffering and trauma. Three themes that came up a lot were addiction, abuse and loss. Some of my participants told of their own struggles with addiction, while others talked about the impact of the addiction of loved ones on their own lives. The local NHS trust reports that there are high levels of alcohol-related admissions to the local hospital of those living on the estate. As a team we are in contact with other local people who are in recovery themselves or are concerned about a family member. On the estate, tackling violence against women is a top priority for the local police neighbourhood team and is a regular agenda item on ward police meetings. Again, I heard first-hand accounts of violence and abuse from my participants. Around loss, three of my participants had experienced the death of a close relative under the age of 60.

There are issues that regularly come up in conversations with other residents too. To explore these I have engaged with theologian David Ford’s phrase “multiple overwhelmings”. ⁹ He identifies how such overwhelmings can come from huge events such as war, massacre, stock market collapse and health epidemics as well as more personal ones such as falling in love, the birth of a child, divorce, serious illness, finding or losing a job and bereavement.¹⁰ Feminist theologian Nicola Slee expands on Ford’s metaphor and describes the experience of being overwhelmed as “being caught up, carried along or bowled over, by some event, force or person, over which one has no control”.¹¹

During the listening phase of this project with my two colleagues, one of them remarked, “Wow, dealing with one of those issues would have been hard but all three of those things, that’s a lot.” The problem is that a lot of listening stops here. The participants’ experiences seem to confirm the assumptions about estates of struggle, difficulty and need. Rather than stopping listening once need was identified, we continued to listen. As a team we have grown and changed because of hearing from our neighbours. They shared openly and frankly, and their stories not only revealed challenges, but resilience, resourcefulness and bravery. I heard stories of care, of being supported, and I saw how people’s perceptions of God and of church were shaped by such experiences. I turn to these stories and listen for the ways they open up new possibilities for mission in estates.

Perceptions of God and church

What is interesting for my research is the ways these traumatic events led the participants to view God through this lens of multiple negative overwhelmings. They described their questions.

I do have that sense of my brother’s death was so unfair and if, you know, that if God exists why does bad things happen to good people?

Sarah

If there is someone there, why is he taking my kids? Why is there disabilities and why is there cancer?

Clive

I do believe there is a God, but I don’t understand him a lot of the time and I question him. Why have you taken…? (crying) Why do things happen to good people?

Katherine

These overwhelmings appear to lead participants to ask questions around the existence of God and how a good God can allow good people to suffer. But rather than pushing people away from God, these experiences seemed to open people up to think about God. Each participant described being open to the idea of God particularly at times of hardship or loss. Despite Mark’s experience of the loss of his wife he had a positive view of God, one of being embraced and comforted.

I’ve always got one image of God, just a picture of just like him with his arms out, reaching for ya.

Participants longed for reassurance that lost loved ones had gone to a better place, and they were often looking for, asking and open for signs. When I asked Valarie about the role of prayer in her life, she shared about talking to a robin as if it were one of her lost loved ones.

I feel silly, if I’m honest. But I dunno, I don’t know how to pray. I talk to like, there will be like a little robin or something. I am like, “Who are you? Are you grandad, are you nan?”

Sarah recalls having a spiritual experience after her brother died.

I think when my brother died that was the time when I really sort of tried a little bit and I felt like there was something. I saw him after he died and things like that and I knew that he was OK coz he smiled at me and that was the sort of only real time that I did feel quite close to God.

While these accounts are not particularly Christian, they reveal an openness to God and to the transcendent.

One strong theme that emerged from the participants was that they had experienced key people in their life who had shown them what God was like. Mark and his wife would not have called themselves Christians, but they did know the local women who did attend church. Mark and his wife would attend the church for certain events, mainly at Christmas.

Julie used to do the hair of ladies from the church, and we went to the carol service and we never used to stay for the coffee. On the way out, April [the priest] was waiting at the door and she said, “Julie I know, the ladies have told me about what you are gonna go through, and just to let you know I work for the local cancer hospital and I’ll be with you all the time” and from that moment on she never left Julie. I didn’t find out till after, even if we just went there for Julie to take blood, April would be there to see her, and she was with her every day when we was there, she was there with Julie.

Mark described the importance of April’s support. “She was with her all the time, and she texted her every night. She was brilliant. If you think of God, then you think of April.”

Valarie also shared her experience of a Christian, Paula, who attends church who had supported her and was alongside her through various ups and downs. Paula doesn’t work in an official role for the church, but she does have a supportive role in a women’s centre where she views her work as her vocation, placed by God among survivors of domestic abuse and their children.

I called up Paula from the centre, she’s my guardian angel, I love that lady so much… So she got me on this and that [referring to courses]. I’ve just got a message from her today, she’s got me into counselling. But if I didn’t have Paula I don’t know where I’ll be right now.

For Clive it was Trinny who had supported him. Trinny, like Paula, doesn’t work in an official church role but does hold a role supporting parents in the community and is growing to see this as her vocation. It is not hard to understand why as Clive talks about her witness and support.

Trinny is a big one… she’s been another hero for me… I see the struggle that she went through, I felt the struggle, I felt it, that’s why we get on so well because we’ve both lost and we’ve both grieved and we’ve both been a bit similar.

Importantly here though what had made an impact on Clive was also Trinny’s own struggle and her resilience and determination to carry on despite multiple overwhelmings. Sarah’s foster mum was a regular church goer, and Sarah identified how “she was just really caring and thoughtful”.

Although many of the participants were open to God, some were indifferent to or even dismissive of God. While Sarah experienced welcome and forgiveness through her church-going parents, she admits, “It was never really the God side of it, I suppose. I never really got, you know involved myself.” Although Clive grew up attending a Church of England school, he has never professed to have a faith.

When people say the word God, I always think of my childhood and going to the church and plays. That’s what I think. It’s not bad, but that’s what I think of. It was never for me; it never was really something that screams out at ya.

It is interesting to note that these two participants who shared some indifference towards God did share stories about calling out to God at difficult times and each shared a hope for lost loved ones of a heaven or a better place that offered them comfort.

The accounts of my participants resonated with the observation of the Revd Canon Gary Jenkins, first Dean of Estates Ministry in the Diocese of Southwark, that one of the aspects of working-class culture is theism:¹² a belief, an openness to the idea of a God and creator, calling it a “warm reception to God, often distant but warm”.¹³ Even those who claimed to have no belief could still give examples of calling out to God in times of distress and had feelings of disappointment or anger with unanswered prayer.

Perceptions of God and experience of church

Many of the participants described a connection to church when they were growing up.

I used to go to Sunday school. We used to go Sunday school there and it was good fun. I just remember baking cookies and doing some drawing.

Cara

I used to love going on a Sunday. I used to go to church when I was little, we always went to Christingle, Christmas Day we were in church…I felt safe in church, I loved it.

Katherine

I used to go for pizza evenings, and I used to be in the junior choir and things like that which I enjoyed.

Sarah

Although church also brought up negative connotations too.

When I think of church I think of itchy tights and Laura Ashley dresses.

Sarah

In light of thinking about mission, it was interesting that half of my participants described the church as a place to get help. Sarah recalled attending various events with her children at different churches as her children were growing up.

It’s always been helping us in some way. I always knew in the past that if we needed help with something that was where we could go, down to the church. You just knew you go to church if you need help.

Mark only attends church occasionally but felt involved and included.

I do coffee mornings; I help put the chairs out and things like that and then helping whatever way I can. Then I help set up for choir, I didn’t think I was going to enjoy that, but it’s really good, I’ve really enjoyed it. You can come and get involved with people and be part of it.

He experiences church as “family”.

The sermons are good, and people are brilliant, it’s like family, you can walk in there and you haven’t been there for weeks and weeks but like you’re just part of their family.

Cara also used the word family, but after initially giving a positive description of church followed up with this:

At the same time, I’ve had, not bitchiness but the judgemental side of it. And there are people that are in there and they are judgemental, and they still turn their nose up at me if they see me.

Sarah similarly identified negative aspects of church being family. “I think we’ve also said the nice side that I have found but also the, you know the there is a judgement or there can be a judgemental side.”

To some degree, these findings echo with Stephen Hance’s work. Hance identified four ways in which his participants viewed the church: benign indifference, fondness and appreciation, local trumps national, and that Christians seemed embarrassed about God.¹⁴ My participants also had a fondness and appreciation for the church and only referred to church in terms of the local.

A prophetic dialogue approach to mission in estates

The experiences of transcendence and the divine heard in the stories of participants opened up new approaches to mission. Andy Weir, a missiologist and Church Army researcher, explores how urban mission is often seen through a tension between social action and evangelism.¹⁵ This approach leads to churches emphasising words or deed, either focusing on physical need and risking becoming what Pope Francis described as a “compassionate NGO”, ¹⁶ or to churches focusing on spiritual need, spiritualising conversion and, as Stephen Bevans and Roger Schroeder point out, risk of an acceptance of the status quo with regards to the injustices in the world.¹⁷ When I started the MA course I was working as a debt advisor for a local church, and we’d give Christmas hampers to families on low income. But as I met those families at the school gates picking up my kids, I noticed they would look sheepishly away as I tried to say hello. I felt increasingly uncomfortable about the approach to mission I was engaged in. Since studying the MA, I have understood more about my discomfort for paternalistic approaches to mission and could no longer continue in that role.

I have found prophetic dialogue to be a third way, which helps move beyond the binary of words and deeds. Bevans and Schroeder describe three key missiologies of the twentieth century: participation in the mission of the triune God (missio Dei); liberating service of the reign of God; and proclamation of Jesus Christ as universal saviour.¹⁸ They propose a fourth understanding of mission – that of “prophetic dialogue”– which synthesises elements of all three strains. “Prophetic dialogue” is a dance of the Trinity in the world that invites all creation to participate.¹⁹ Bevans and Schroeder maintain that “it is based on the beautiful but complex rhythm of dialogue and prophecy, boldness and humility, learning and teaching, letting go and speaking out”.²⁰ Churches need to listen and engage in dialogue always aware that they have something important to share, a prophetic message. Based on the listening I have done, I propose that a prophetic dialogue approach to mission offers a good way forward for work on estates. I will discuss this based around three themes: presence, enabling and proclamation.

Presence

This research has been about listening to the voices on the estate. From the interviews it appeared that the participants had rarely been given opportunity to talk about their lives. On one occasion following an interview I received a message from a participant I’d interviewed earlier that day. It read, “Thank you for today, really therapeutic talking sometimes.” This message encouraged me and reminded me of the importance of listening and giving people space to share their stories. Catholic theologian Albert Nolan teaches that the first steps of mission are to “listen, listen. Ask questions. Listen!”²¹ In Prophetic Dialogue, Bevans and Schroeder liken mission to being “visitors in someone else’s garden”.²² As we enter, we admire and see the beauty of the garden through our hosts eyes. What might be deemed as a weed to the visitor might be a beautiful wildflower to the host. The listening enables us to see through their eyes.

David Bosch argues that “God is a missionary God” who is already present and at work in the world, redeeming and reconciling all things to himself despite the church.²³ Mission is seen as a movement from God to the world and the church is an instrument of that and participates in that movement.²⁴ Bosch maintains that “to participate in Mission is to participate in the movement of God’s love towards people, since God is a fountain of sending love”.²⁵ It was this participation I heard in the stories of how people felt supported by key people.

I observed how each participant could identify a person in their life who had shown them characteristics of God. In some cases, they named it directly: “guardian angel”, “if I think of God I think of …” or “a hero”. In other cases, they were less explicit; for example, a parent “always leaving a door open”. Samuel Wells claims the most important word in theology is “with”.²⁶ The good news of the gospel is that God is “with” us. He argues that the true predicament in life is not limitation but isolation.²⁷ Wells claims that to celebrate the gospel we should be “with people in poverty and distress even when there’s nothing we can do for them. By being with people in grief and sadness and loss even when there’s nothing to say.”²⁸ Andrew Grinnell argues that Wells’s “being with” approach doesn’t go far enough and is “passive in the face of dehumanising structures”.²⁹

Anna Ruddick’s suggestion of “missional pastoral care” offers an important next step. It is “an intentional form of missional living shaped by seven elements: being among people who are different, living locally, being available, taking practical action, long-term commitment, consistency and love”.³⁰ It is a fusion of mission and pastoral care.³¹ Ruddick coined this term after her work hearing from Eden Network team members and community members who lived alongside each other in areas of social deprivation. The team members’ ministry involved supporting and caring for people without the care being a means of simply evangelising. Ruddick argues that “Missional pastoral care is a way of life that seeks to share in the mission of God by participating in communities who have been marginalized, developing significant and mutual relationships with people with an eye on the common good.”³²

Enabling

The kind of help people identified was different from the paternalistic models of meeting need. Sarah identified above that church was a place she knew she can go to get help; however, Mark expanded on this further and talked about church in terms of his involvement, belonging and contribution. This move from receiving help to participating is important. There is a rise in the number of people accessing food banks and getting debt advice from church-based social action projects. Many social action approaches are based around needs and focus on what Wells would call “working for” others. Ann Morisy argues that needs-meeting approaches can distract us from the “primary task of the Church: that of helping people to discover the scope for relationship with God through Jesus”.³³

Asset-based community development starts from a different perspective and asks what the assets and strengths of a community are and how can we find creative solutions based on these strengths. Al Barratt describes it as:

Asset-based community development, or ABCD, is an approach to community development that uses the skills and capacities of local residents, the power of local associations, and the support of local institutions, to build stronger, more sustainable communities for the future.³⁴

Barrett acknowledges that ABCD isn’t explicitly Christian, but the values and principles resonate deeply with Christian theology and practice.³⁵ In his theological reflection he likens ABCD to the feeding of the 5,000 where the people are hungry, and Jesus initially responds by asking the disciples to “go and see”, to identify what resources they already had, and he then did a miracle with that.³⁶ ABCD is about discovering and celebrating what is already there, building from the inside out, starting with local people and local knowledge (instead of having professionalised services working for people) and is relationship-driven.³⁷

Proclamation

A prophetic dialogue approach reminds us that churches also have a prophetic role alongside this deep listening, presence and enabling. In my research, the participants appreciated not just the presence of others but also their care and support. Critics of missional pastoral care might argue that this is a fairly secular model of care, and ask where the gospel is, where is Jesus? My answer would be that Jesus is living within the Christian. Each participant I interviewed gave an example of a Christian accompanying them and helping them in practical ways. This can become explicit through storytelling and questioning.

Katherine commented, “I believe, but I question.” Some church traditions do not welcome questions and are not comfortable with the disappointment and grief of unanswered prayer. This could be likened to want to skip over Good Friday and Holy Saturday; to arrive at resurrection on Sunday and the celebration by bypassing the grieving, doubting and lamenting. This is why I particularly appreciate being part of the Church of England, as it journeys through the whole narrative during lent. Jesus, in the garden of Gethsemane, is deeply distressed and troubled and says to his disciples “my soul is overwhelmed with sorrow…”³⁸ He also questions the Father, asking if he really must go through this and if God would take the cup of suffering away.³⁹ This is an example of Jesus’ humanity, and the fact that Jesus was overwhelmed with sorrow, experienced human emotions of suffering and trials gives us a sense of hope and having a God in Christ who understands what it’s like to experience overwhelmings.

What prophetic dialogue and the stories of participants indicate is that this prophetic element should not be seen as a separate task. While I agree that presence and enabling are not enough on their own, what the stories suggest is that through the faithfulness of Christians and the careful listening we have developed the proclamation element emerged. The gospel is less proclaimed, and more shared naturally. The gospel is “gossiped” in the midst of being present and enabling others. Picking up another theme from prophetic dialogue is the way the formal setting of the service and the liturgy also enable proclamation. The storytelling, the lament and sorrow and the space for hope and celebration resonate with my participants’ accounts. From my experience working on the estate, I have found it a place where people know how to party and celebrate. One of the beautiful and surprising things that happens in our church is the way on a Sunday people clap the prayers, the reading of Scripture and the sermon.

Prophetic dialogue has been a helpful way to illuminate what seems to be naturally happening in our community, that through listening, being present and enabling others the proclamation of the gospel has emerged. To pick up two of the metaphors used by Bevans and Schroeder, in noticing the way the garden is flourishing we find something beautiful and particular, even if it is not what we had in mind originally. Similarly, as we join in the dance of God we find ways the gospel is faithfully improvised afresh.

Afterword: a personal reflection

I have experienced being overwhelmed as I have wrestled with my past parochial approaches to mission. Overwhelmed as I have considered the use of power and “doing to” approaches to mission and evangelism. Overwhelmed by the stories and by the hardships my neighbours have experienced. Overwhelmed by my own emotional response as I noticed echoes of my own experiences while listening to theirs. At times I was aware that perhaps I’d overstepped the boundary of researcher as I teared up and cried with those who cried, and my human response seemed to trump the researcher role. It was hard to relisten to the stories and reread them time and time again. The black text on the white screen seemed to make them more harrowing, but I was also overwhelmed at the beautiful ways God seemed to be revealed through and in the stories. Additionally, during the time of the interview process our home had several attempted break-ins, one of which I interrupted. This resulted in me not being able to sleep, being hyper vigilant and anxious. Thankfully my neighbours and friends were extremely supportive during this time. I could access support and was gifted time away on retreat. This helped me reorient myself toward the One who overwhelms and refreshes my soul. Slee maintains that “God is present and at work in the overwhelming”⁴⁰ and furthermore that the “experience of being overwhelmed is an invitation to greater and fuller life”.⁴¹

I believe participation in God’s mission is standing shoulder to shoulder with others in community and inviting them to the dance and to encounter the One who saves and overwhelms with love, grace, mercy and forgiveness. The kind of mission that is required is Paul’s description of the disciples living among those in Thessalonica:

… so we cared for you. Because we loved you so much, we were delighted to share with you not only the gospel of God but our lives as well.⁴²

About the author

Hayley Humphreys has an MA in Theology, Ministry and Mission obtained through her studies with Church Mission Society. She is currently employed by Church Army in the Southwark Diocese as a pioneer evangelist. Hayley has 20 years’ experience of Christian urban mission engagement and has a particular heart for estates ministry.

More from this issue

Notes

1. Bishop Philip North, “Putting the poor first,” Church of the poor? A call to action for churches in the UK, 8, http://www.church-poverty.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/Church-of-the-Poor-report-web.pdf, accessed 10 October 2022. ↩︎
2. Al Barrett, Finding the Treasure: Good News from the Estates (London: SPCK, 2023), 1. ↩︎
3. Natalie Williams and Paul Brown, Invisible Divides: Class, culture and barriers to belonging in the church (London: SPCK, 2022), 2. ↩︎
4. Lynsey Hanley, Estates: An Intimate History (London: Granta Books, 2017), xiv, 5–7. ↩︎
5. Ibid., 9. ↩︎
6. Estates Ministry, “Southwark Diocese has the second highest number of estates parishes in the country. But what is an ‘estate parish’?” The Diocese of Southwark, 25 January 2023, https://southwark.anglican.org/southwark-diocese-has-the-second-highest-number-of-estates-parishes-in-the-country-but-what-is-an-estates-parish/, accessed 2 February 2023. ↩︎
7. Virginia Braun & Victoria Clarke, Successful Qualitative Research: A practical guide for beginners (London: Sage Publications Ltd, 2013), 58. ↩︎
8. Mary Clark Moschella, Ethnography as a Pastoral Practice: An Introduction (Cleveland, OH: The Pilgrim Press, 2008). ↩︎
9. David F. Ford, The Shape of Living: Spiritual Directions for Everyday Life (London: Canterbury Press Norwich, 1997). ↩︎
10. Ibid., xix–xx ↩︎
11. Nicola Slee, “A Spirituality for Multiple Overwhelmings,” Practical Theology 10, no. 1 (2017): 21. ↩︎
12. Revd Canon Gary Jenkins, National Estates Church Network (NECN), London Regional Conference 2023: The Kingdom on Estates, session “engaging with the working class”, 2 February 2023. ↩︎
13. Ibid. ↩︎
14. Stephen Hance, Seeing Ourselves as Others See Us: Perceptions of the Church of England (Cambridge: Grove Books Ltd, 2021), 2. ↩︎
15. Andy Weir, Creative Tension in Urban Mission: Reflections on Missional Practice and Theory (Cambridge: Grove Books Ltd, 2015), 8 ↩︎
16. Samuel Wells, Russell Rook and David Barclay, For Good: The Church and the Future of Welfare (London: Canterbury Press Norwich, 2017), 34. ↩︎
17. Ibid., 343. ↩︎
18. Stephen B. Bevans and Roger P. Schroeder, Constants in Context: A Theology of Mission for Today (New York, Orbis Books, 2004), 286–395. ↩︎
19. Stephen B. Bevans and Roger P. Schroeder, Prophetic Dialogue: Reflections of Christian Mission Today (New York: Orbis Books, 2011), 9–10. ↩︎
20. Ibid., 156 ↩︎
21. Ibid., 59. ↩︎
22. Ibid., 33–34, 73–74. ↩︎
23. David J. Bosch, Transforming Mission: Paradigm Shifts in Theology of Mission (New York: Orbis, 2011), 400. ↩︎
24. Ibid. ↩︎
25. Ibid. ↩︎
26. Samuel Wells, A Nazareth Manifesto: Being with God (Chichester: John Wiley & Sons Ltd, 2015), 3, 11. ↩︎
27. Ibid., 43. ↩︎
28. Ibid., 5. ↩︎
29. Andrew Grinnell, “Just Friendship: The Political and Societal Implications of the Practice of Relocation” (PhD diss, Durham University, 2019), 38. ↩︎
30. Anna Ruddick, Reimagining Mission from Urban Places: Missional Pastoral Care (London: SCM Press, 2020), 1. ↩︎
31. Ibid., 1–2. ↩︎
32. Ibid., 21. ↩︎
33. Ann Morisy, Journeying Out: A New Approach to Christian Mission (London: Continuum, 2004), 23. ↩︎
34. Al Barrett, Tackling Poverty in England: An Asset-Based Approach (London: Church Urban Fund, 2013), 1. ↩︎
35. Al Barrett, Asset-Based Community Development: A Theological Reflection (London: Church Urban Fund, 2013), 2. ↩︎
36. Ibid. ↩︎
37. Ibid., 1–6. ↩︎
38. Mark 14:34 (NIV). ↩︎
39. Mark 14:36 (NIV). ↩︎
40. Slee, “A Spirituality for Multiple Overwhelmings,” 27. ↩︎
41. Ibid. ↩︎
42. 1 Thess.2:8 (NIV). ↩︎