Daniel Payne is a young leader on this year’s Buxton Leadership Programme. With applications now open for the 2022/23 cohort, he reflects on his experience…
My time as a Buxton intern, Community Organising with St Mary’s Walthamstow has been spent learning by doing. I have learnt that sometimes change happens very slowly, in very ordinary ways.
Fr Marco Lopes (priest at St Martin of Tours, Plaistow) and Frankie Webster (the community organiser working with the church on CTC’s Organising for Growth project) reflect on how Community Organising is helping the parish to “come in to its own” and “blossom.”
This Sunday (20 March), the Church of England’s national online service comes from some of our partner churches in east London and the City. Our Director Fr Angus Ritchie is preaching and presiding, and Francelise Mamilonne from St George-in-the-East shares testimony on how her faith motivates community organising around the issue of housing repairs in Shadwell.
Each person who participated in the service has a story of faith and organising…
Jonathan Akindutire is one of this year’s participants in the Buxton Leadership Programme – which combines a Westminster placement, a church- based community organising placement and training and development sessions. Having started in September 2021 he reflects on the journey so far…
I joined On the Rock International Ministries Church at the beginning of September as a Buxton Intern; thriving and eager for the opportunity to participate in the rebuilding of the community of Marksgate, post-Covid. I had recently graduated from university, eager to learn and work in communities – with young people, and to learn about how parliament works. This blog is a set of reflections on the five months I have spent in Marksgate so far.
Frankie Webster co-ordinates our community organising lay leadership programme, the Wagstaff Course. She writes about what she has learned while training new leaders over the past year.
If you look up the word leader in most dictionaries, it is defined as a person who leads a group of people. Someone with a following. This challenges the common idea that some people are just ‘natural’ leaders with X leadership qualities that most others do not possess. It means that bar Jesus, leaders are made not born, and therefore we can be leaders too.
In the third of his blogs for churches preparing for Living Wage Week, our Director looks at Catholic Social Teaching and the Living Wage – and argues that this year’s celebration comes at a crucial moment in our common life.
At the start of the pandemic, Pope Francis spoke from an empty St Peter’s Square, in an Urbi et Orbi message that was streamed around the world. He observed that the pandemic was like the storm faced by Jesus and his disciples in Mark 4.
In the second of his blogs for churches preparing for Living Wage Week (Monday 15th to Sunday 21st November) our Director reflects on the lectionary readings for the Feast of Christ the King, which falls on Sunday 21st.
Readings: Daniel 7.9-10, 13-14 | Revelation 1.4b-8 | John 18.33-37
In the Gospel reading, Jesus begins his teaching with a negative statement: “My kingdom is not from this world.” St Augustine draws our attention to the nuances of these statements: his kingdom is in this world, but not of it. It is here, though not from here. If his kingdom had been “from here,” Jesus tells Pilate, his followers would be fighting to keep him from being “handed over.”
In the first of three blogs to help churches prepare for Living Wage week, CTC Director Angus Ritchie reflects on the roots of the 20-year campaign in Christian teaching and action.
The Living Wage has been in the news again – with the Government announcing an above-inflation rise in the minimum wage, to bring it closer to the level of the real Living Wage (outside of London at least), This rise in the minimum wage – and the Government’s branding of it as a ‘National Living Wage’ – are evidence of the impact of the 20-year-old Living Wage Campaign. As well as the campaign’s impact on legislation, it has persuaded over 8,000 employers to paying the real Living Wage to every worker – and this has put over £1.5 billion pounds back into the pockets of low paid workers.
Living Wage Week runs from Monday 15th to Sunday 25th November. It is a great opportunity for churches to celebrate the central role of faith in the 20-year campaign; to explore the roots of the Living Wage in Scripture and Church teaching, and to take action to support the campaign today.
Miriam Brittenden directs our Buxton Leadership Programme, In this blog she introduces our 2021-22 participants…
Autumn is often a time of new beginnings, and this Autumn brings a new cohort of Buxton Leadership Programme Associates. We were delighted last month to welcome Daniel Payne, Jonathan Akindutire and Emily Burlington-Horton to the Centre for Theology and Community, as they discern together what a Christian vocation in public life looks like.
Applications for the 2021-22 Buxton Leadership Programme are open until 26 April. One of this year’s participants, Josh Price, blogs on his experience of the programme.
For me, there were three immediate attractions to the Buxton Leadership Programme. First, I was tired of hearing hands-tied, party political-answers to straight forward questions on breakfast politics programmes. I wanted to discover if honesty and integrity could prevail in Westminster. Second, I loved the idea of stepping out from Church, building relationships with neighbours, and seeing practical change first-hand. And third, I didn’t know what to do long-term and was drawn towards an opportunity to really explore what God might be calling me into.
