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A fun day out in London


Today my colleague and I took advantage of it being half term, and a quieter week in the church office, to attend the Active Church conference put on by Oasis Church Waterloo.  The grey-haired bloke in the background is Steve Chalke, who it turns out is far more radical than I thought.  A very interesting day with a lot to reflect on.  

My most embarrassing moment of the day came when a perfectly nice Anglican priest asked me if I had a paid role in the church or was a volunteer.  I've blogged before, I think, about the fact that people tend to assume I'm not a minister (or not a proper one) because I'm young-ish and female.  So I decided to put my new resolution into effect - to throw these questions back at people when they ask them - and said something along the lines of: "Why do you ask that?  Why are you wondering if I'm paid?"  It turns out he hadn't heard me say I was a minister because of the traffic noise, so I immediately felt guilty for being aggressive.  But I think that's probably better than passive aggressive - better to challenge assumptions up front than moan about them on my blog later.  (Except when they're not assumptions.  Whoops.)

The moment when I laughed out loud (and no one else did, which was also a bit embarrassing, but hey) was when Steve put up on the screen a summary of the way Christianity is sometimes presented, as written by himself and Brian McLaren.  They have entitled it 'the modern gospel':

INFORMATION ON HOW TO GET TO HEAVEN AFTER YOU DIE

With a large footnote about increasing your personal happiness and success through God

With a small footnote about character development

With a smaller footnote about spiritual experience

With a tiny footnote about social and global transformation 

The theology of mission practised by the Oasis Trust, which Steve founded back in 1985, argues that social and global transformation is right at the heart of what the gospel of Jesus is all about.*  Steve spent the day telling us about the different social projects the Oasis Trust had got involved in, including opening schools, running a food bank, starting a city farm on an overgrown plot of land (plus a lot more I can't remember), not to mention being the UN special adviser on human trafficking.  It was overwhelming at times - the guy is an incredible entrepreneur with an amazing amount of energy, and the sheer number of projects he had been involved in setting up was dazzling.  But it was fascinating for someone who describes herself as an evangelist to see the Christian gospel being communicated in a very practical way.  "I never tell people to become Christians," Steve explained, "because that would imply that they aren't already." 




*With a tiny footnote about how to get to heaven after you die.



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  1. Martyn21 February 2015 at 06:54

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