URBANarmy

"White, twentyish, female" - I feel frustrated - " 5' 6"ish, mousey hair with a braid" - I feel angry - "blue jeans grey top " – Annoyed at myself that I have to do this. I stand giving a policewoman a description “…this is just in case she does something stupid...we didn’t feel threatened but if she did happen to carry out her threat we need you to know...” If there is one thing that is predictable - in having your church doors open to the community from 8am to 10pm Monday - Friday – it is the unpredictability of what may happen. Our small charity shop was just about to close when Lisa arrived. I’d not met her before. I certainly won’t forget her. The level of insane abuse was incredible. A drug-user desperate for cash for her next fix. Trying all she had to get us to subsidise her habit. Trying all she had to swing something. Trying all she had to unnerve us. There was little we could do but stand together united as wave after wa...

Engel on the Great Commission... "Christ, ... (within the great commission) put forth a seamless agenda with no dichotomies or variations in priority between evangelism, holy living, and social transformation.This great truth about Christ's kingdom and reign almost completely eluded me until the first of the famous Lausanne conferences held in 1974. One leader after another from the Two-Thirds World prophetically declared that our western evangelistic preoccupation, while foundational and necessary, had not transformed the world as Christ intended. They issued a clear call to return to a local, church-based, kingdom focused gospel that would penetrate all of life with the lordship of Christ. Then and only then will the church have a compelling message in a pluralistic world. At their insistence, the famous but now almost forgotten and ignored Lausanne Covenant called for church-based holistic ministry that takes the entirety of the Great Commission seriously.For many in...

Where were you at 17? 17. Homeless. Jobless. Problems seem to follow Mark. His family helpless intimidated by his mood swings - his aggression, bitterness, rancour, resentment - had to make him homeless. For the protection of his family he now lives in a hostel. We are being briefed as to how the afternoon session of " Urban Escape " is going to pan out when we hear the shouting and a smash. Knowing the young people are outside we investigate. Mark is going off on one. Pent up anger and feelings is being heaved up over his younger brothers. Young waiting onlookers look on shocked. Scared. Mark looks at Roz (our youth worker) "can I talk?" He comes in and ‘caged like’ prowls around the youth club he knows so well. Any coherency is robbed by his anger. We try to listen by prowling after him. A ‘no one understands’ flurry of hands and expletives seems to be the end. He walks to the door and just before he goes back onto the street. Roz asks him if he wants a ...

The danger of pre-occupation... Great couple of weeks in the rural coastal marshes of Vendee, France – good to get to the noise, hustle of the city! Here’s a picture I snapped (groan!) a bit dark but hopefully you can make it out... When emerging it is well worth looking to see who’s or what back you are emerging upon! Sometimes it is too easy to remain content and bask in the sunlight! Dangerous!

Vendee France here we come - See you in a fortnight...

Robert Beckford observes:- Urban church action is often limited to witness and welfare. Witness action focuses on evangelism. Put simply, the measure of a church is how many people it can get through the church doors. Here, the community is changed as believers come to know Jesus Christ as their personal Saviour. This strategy responds to the 'more believers, less crime' approach. The welfare model recognises the importance of acting justly in the community beyond being a good neighbour and paying taxes. It engages in welfare projects designed to assist those in need. The 'clean up the mess' approach. Both these approaches fail to get to grips with the complexity of the theology required to respond to systemic failure. Beckford articulates ‘prophetic action’ as a legitimate response to systemic failure. The model of the biblical prophet inspires prophetic action. The prophetic is fundamentally an expression of the will of God revealing how things ...

My heart is still pounding. My head is still spinning. My throat is still in my mouth. Walking back form a pastoral visit I hear the shouting first. Then I see two men fighting on the floor outside the post office. I Jump over the railings, across the road. I take it all in quickly. Looks like a mugging. The muggee? is fighting back. I run to the local police station in the market. Shut. No-one there. Seems even the police have retreated! I run back. The shouting is worse. The violence is getting out of control. People are just watching as three or four men are pounding the mugger. I see his panic. His eyes shoot at me, pleading. "Just sit on him" I say in an attempt to slow the blows. His jaw looks broken. His jacket rips. His drug debris spills onto the pavement. I make it obvious that I am calling the police. I cut through the question after question routine "...look this is kicking off - hurry". The blows turn into swearing and abuse. The muggee ...

For all his big claims, big threats and big fighting talk Mike Tyson looks pretty much punched out to me. Punching the air, not connecting seems to have worn him out, exhausted, shattered - down. A bit of blog reading has left me wondering if we too as a church are punched out. Sure we are great at the hardcore fighting talk. The big claims, the big threats, the combat rhetoric - but I sometimes wonder if we are flaying, lashing out into thin air - hitting nothing but ourselves. Not connecting is pretty tiring. Insinuations have been thrown that we - in our context - are not up for it!!? Fingers have pointed saying that we shy away from the battle! Militant noses look haughtily down on us and our misguided efforts. Well here's the fight:- “While women weep as they do now, I’ll fight; while little children go hungry as they do now, I’ll fight; while men go to prison, in and out, in and out, as they do now, I’ll fight; while there is a drunkard left, while there is a poor lost girl...

You need to know Maureen... ( I try to understand.... ; Sometimes all you can do... ; Maureen...Professional pastoral pre-occupation!! ) I’m looking at the phone. Shall I call her? For goodness sake this 60 year old woman has got me running round after her like no one else. I’m pretty miffed. Out of everyone she gets the most attention form Kate and I. Picking her up for church events taking her home. Taking her to see her husband Sid who suffers from Schizophrenia. Bringing her home. Not all the time but she gets the lions share of our time. Now she is busy knifing us in the back for not picking her up. Not caring. Being selfish. Not understanding. Not considerate. Funny how she forgets it was us who in the middle of the night dropped everything to be with Maureen while Sid tore their flat to bits in a haze of mental anguish. It was us who fought with the health authorities to take Maureen’s concern of Sid seriously. It was us who went onto the secure mental health...