This is one of our regular blogposts of prayer requests for the Jellicoe Community and the wider work of the Contextual Theology Centre

We’re one week into our summer Jellicoe Internship programme – with around a dozen students working in four locations in East London to promote congregational engagement in community organising.  They have certainly hit the ground running, and will be blogging about their work soon!  Please pray for them, and for the communities in which they are working.

In Manor Park, Richard Hill, Alice Kallaugher, Iarla Manny and Nathan Mulcock (all Oxford) are working with our Assistant Director, Fr Sean Connolly, to develop the team engaged in community organising at SS Stepen & Nicholas Catholic Parish, Manor Park – and Nitasha Kadam (Notre Dame) is continuing to help the church develop links with the local Hindu community.

In Shadwell and Stepney, Tom Daggett and Sarah Santhosham (Oxford – both returning after internships last summer) are working with Capt Nick Coke at local Anglican, Baptist and Salvation Army congregations, and Abdi-Aziz Suliman (Sheffield) and Abdul Jama (Oxford) with local mosques, on issues of common concern – including drug-related crime and the state of local parks. 

In Shoreditch, Gina Byrne (LSE) and Andrew Hood (Oxford) are working with the Revd Adam Atkinson at St Peter’s, Bethnal Green (a founder member of Shoreditch Citizens) and Luke Martin (Oxford) is about to join them to work with Gracechurch Hackney – a plant from St Helen’s Bishopsgate

In Hackney, Emma Pritchard and Gregers Bangert (Oxford) are working with ordinand Stephen Parker (St Stephen’s House, Oxford) and Fr Rob Wickham at St John-at-Hackney to engage local shops in the CitySafe campaign.

Two interns are pioneering new parts of the Jellicoe programme – Isaac Stanley (an intern in Manor Park last summer) working is the Congolese community in London, and Dominic Keech (an ordinand at St Stephen’s) bringing the internship home to the Parish of Old St Pancras – which encompasses the church and community in which Fr Basil Jellicoe worked in the 1930s – with Fr Philip North and Fr John Caster.

Please also pray for…

Those co-ordinating the programme – Angus Ritchie, Tom Daggett and Sr Josephine Canny (Chaplain to the interns)

Those involved in the £5m Near Neighbours Programme in the Church of England and Church Urban Fund – of which CTC is the local hub, especially Angus and Susanne Mitchell – and their new colleague the Revd Timothy Clapton, who has been appointed Near Neighbours Co-ordinator for Eastern London.