The CTC team works across a wide range of London churches – from Pentecostal to Roman Catholic, and with church sizes varying from ten or twenty to the thousands. At this week’s staff meeting, we reflected on some of the common themes emerging from our experience of church-based community organising in the midst of the lockdown.

The first theme that has emerged is the way that the pandemic has revealed some previously hidden truths about our common life.

Centre Director Angus Ritchie reflects on the celebration of Holy Week and Easter in the midst of the Coronavirus lockdown.

The last two weeks have been a bewildering and frenetic time for Christian leaders. The worship, pastoral care and community engagement of local churches is needed more than ever – and the challenges of moving it rapidly to telephone and computer have been immense.

Josh Harris is managing a new CTC project, harnessing the potential of community organising for congregational development – and he is also a Curate at St George-in-the-East. Here he poses some questions – and highlights some resources – for churches in the midst of the current crisis.

As Angus Ritchie wrote last week,  this crisis is fast-changing and bewildering. In barely a week our churches have gone from suggesting we shouldn’t shake hands in the peace to the first suspension of public worship since 1208 and the closure of all churches in London.

CTC Director Angus Ritchie reflects on Christian ministry in the context of a Coronavirus pandemic.

In the fast-changing and bewildering context of a Coronavirus, how can our response be shaped by the example of Jesus? There are four features of his ministry that seem particularly relevant at this moment.

Shermara Fletcher heads the William Seymour Programme at CTC, engaging Pentecostals in community organising. She is also the community organiser in The Open Table at St George-in-the-East. Last night, at a gathering of leaders from a wide range of congregations across London, she reflected on the role of community organising in the struggle to end homelessness.

Good Evening, it is great to be here amongst you. For the next five minutes I’ll sharing with you why community organising is a powerful tool in addressing homelessness.

Earlier this month, our Development Director Tim Thorlby spoke at the launch of London Living Wage Week, at an event with Mayor Sadiq Khan. CTC is a founding partner in the enterprise, and Tim is currently on secondment as its Managing Director. In his talk, he explained the roots of the company in community organising…

My name is Tim Thorlby. I’m the Managing Director of Clean for Good – an office cleaning company for London

After the first six weeks of this year’s Buxton Leadership Programme, its new Co-ordinator Miriam Brittenden reflects on the way in which it offers “a new kind of politics”…

Rarely has the UK felt so bitterly divided, and rarely has ‘politics’ as it is conventionally understood, felt so broken. Three years of in-fighting, intractable disagreements, and a profound inability to compromise over the dreaded ‘B-word’ have worn down the morale of the nation. We stand at a pivotal moment in our history, and yet many would be forgiven for wanting to turn away from politics altogether.

In last Sunday’s sermon, Fr Richard Springer (Rector of St George-in-the-East and Director of our Urban Leadership School) connected the “mundane” work of an annual church meeting with the power and joy of Jesus’ Easter victory.

The passages he was preaching on were Acts 5.27-32 and John 20.19-31.

Our Co-ordinating Fellow, Fr Simon Cuff, has just had Love in Action – his guide to Catholic Social Teaching (CST) – published by SCM Press. The formal book launch is on 18 March in central London. Here he reflects on the importance of CST in our fractured society…

As a society, we are in desperate need of consensus. We disagree about how to tackle rising inequality, about how to solve the disparity of income across regions, about how to relate to the European Union. We even disagree about how best to disagree. We are in desperate need of consensus, of common ground.

In our latest report, we explain how Community Organising recalls the Church to the vision of the Gospel. In this blog, based on the introduction to the report, its author Angus Ritchie summarises its argument… 

In the Bible and in the history of the Church, God raises up leaders from and not just for those who are oppressed. From Moses and Miriam to Rosa Parks and Desmond Tutu, God chooses the people who experience injustice to bring it to an end.