Is what you eat a matter of justice or a lifestyle choice?

These days there are many options when buying food: organic, locally grown, soil association certified, rainforest alliance approved. But what does it all actually mean?

In this cafe session (the first of two organised by members of the community itself following our recent crowdsource gathering) we will try to answer this question and discuss whether taking such labels into consideration when filling your grocery basket is important.

In other words, does God care what you eat?

Wednesday 19 June, 7:30-10pm at Coffee Republic, North Finchley.

What difference can a paper flower make?

On the 8th June, Justice Matters will be joining with many others from across the country for the Big If London gathering. The day will include inspiring speakers, stories, family activities and music. The symbolic centre of the day will be the planting of a breathtaking field of paper flowers, with two million petals representing the two million children that die from hunger every year – lives that could be saved.

The obvious questions is: Aside from being a visually impressive stunt, exactly what good will two million paper flowers actually achieve?

Its easy to get disheartened when campaigning for change. We look at the scale of the problems facing our world and tell us ourselves that we don't have enough power to make a difference; that only the rich and influential like Bono, Bill Gates or the Prime Minister can make a real impact. Standing there in Hyde Park with our paper flowers could seem a bit of a pointless gesture, but maybe there's more to it than meets the eye.

At St Barnabas last week,  David Brown talked about Gideon, an unlikely Old Testament leader who God used to rescue Israel from overwhelming enemy odds. Having already radically thinned out the Israelite army (from 32,000 men down to 300), God had Gideon equip the remaining force with highly unlikely weapons - trumpets and torches concealed within clay jars. In other words, Gideon's army was vastly outnumbered and had no hands free to draw their swords against the enemy forces. This sounds a lot like the situation we find ourselves in when facing the seemingly intractable evils of the world - a small voice for justice amid the howling gale, armed not with sword and spear, but paper flowers and wry placards.

Despite expectations, Gideon's army saw a great victory:

"Gideon and the hundred men with him reached the edge of the camp at the beginning of the middle watch, just after they had changed the guard. They blew their trumpets and broke the jars that were in their hands. The three companies blew the trumpets and smashed the jars. Grasping the torches in their left hands and holding in their right hands the trumpets they were to blow, they shouted, “A sword for the Lord and for Gideon!” While each man held his position around the camp, all the Midianites ran, crying out as they fled.

When the three hundred trumpets sounded, the Lord caused the men throughout the camp to turn on each other with their swords." (Judges 7 v19-22a)

As the final verse highlights, the victory was not Gideon's but God's (indeed, God had told Gideon to reduce his army to ensure that this point was abundantly clear). So too, when we take our stand against the silent scandal of hunger, we should remember that our paper flowers are like those trumpets and torches - laughably fragile, ridiculously inconsequential and yet of heaven-rending, world-changing power in God's hands.

So join us and thousands of others to make a big noise and demand G8 leaders take action to tackle the silent scandal of hunger. We may not only have limited power by ourselves, but with God anything is possible...

What is social justice?

At our gathering at The Bohemia last week, we discussed what we understood by the term 'social justice' and how it fits into the life of a Christian. These were the discussion notes we used to inform that conversation.

What do you think?

What is social justice?
"Social justice is what faces you in the morning. It is awakening in a house with adequate water supply, cooking facilities and sanitation. It is the ability to nourish your children and send them to school where their education not only equips them for employment but also reinforces their knowledge and understanding of their cultural inheritance. It is the prospect of genuine employment and good health: a life of choices and opportunity, free from discrimination."            

Mick Dodson, Annual Report of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander

In the Bible, the concept of social justice is described using the Hebrew word tzadeqah, meaning to be “right with God and therefore committed to putting right all other relationships in life.”

Tim Keller, Generous Justice

"We often dismiss injustice, poverty, trafficking, homelessness and hunger as the result of poor social, economic, or political policy. It is vital for us to understand that injustice grieves God and is contrary to his will and purpose... [Our efforts to eradicate injustice] is not simply social service or social action; it is the wider work of redemption...

The only true transformation happens from the inside out. It is the transforming presence of the Kingdom of God in the world that ensures the true presence if justice... at both a personal and community level."

Strickland & Roberts, Just Imagine – The Social Justice Agenda

Q: What strikes you about these descriptions of social justice? How do they compare to your own understanding of social justice?

Justice, mercy and faithfulness
"What does the Lord require of you but to do justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God?"

Micah 6:8 

"Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees – hypocrites! For you tithe mint and dill and cumin, and have neglected the weightier matters of the law - justice and mercy and faithfulness."

Matthew 23:23 

"For the kingdom of God is not a matter of eating and drinking but of righteousness [justice] and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit."

Romans 14:17

Q: Does this ordering of the three elements of our relationship with God surprise you? 
Q: Do we get the balance between justice, mercy and faith right in our own lives and church? 


What’s the difference between justice and mercy?
"Mercy is like the ambulance at the bottom of a cliff, ready to help those who fall. Justice builds a fence at the top of the cliff to protect them from falling in the first place.

Mercy wipes the tears from the eyes. Justice asks, 'Why are you crying?'

Mercy welcomes the hungry to gather round God's banqueting table. Justice addresses why some are under the table aching of hunger while others are sitting on top of the table aching from gluttony.

Mercy seeks and saves those lost in darkness. Justice asks, 'Why is it dark? Who is keeping it dark? Who is benefiting from this darkness? Is it I, Lord?"

Brad Jersak, Can You Hear Me?

A prayer for the would be activist
May God bless us with discomfort at easy answers,
half-truths and superficial relationships,
so that we may live deeply in your heart.
May God bless us with anger at injustice,
oppression and exploitation of people,
so that we may work for justice, freedom and peace.
May God bless us with tears to shed for those who suffer from pain,
rejection, starvation and war,
so that we may reach out our hand to comfort them and turn their pain to joy.
And may God bless us with enough foolishness
to believe we can make a difference in the world.

Franciscan Benediction

Lecture: Terrorism, National Security & Civil Liberties

The East Barnet Anglican-Methodist Partnership Annual Social Justice Lecture
"Terrorism, National Security and Civil Liberties"
Speaker: Lord Carlile of Berriew QC (former government advisor on anti-terrorism legislation)

Tuesday, 6th November 2012 - 7.30pm at Brookside Methodist Church, 2 Cat Hill, East Barnet EN4 8JB.

For further information, contact Revd Colin Smith.
020 8449 8386 / CASMITH1898@aol.com

Caroline Burns on being an Ordinary Radical

In Part Two of our series, The Rough Guide to being an Ordinary Radical, we heard from Caroline Burns, Bolivia coordinator for Food for the Hungry. Caroline spoke passionately about her experience of following a call to Bolivia, where she spent several years working outside her comfort zone to promote nutrition and basic health, while at the same time overhauling the management and finances of the project she was leading there.

She made no apology for speaking boldly about her faith and the part it has played in her journey into becoming an Ordinary Radical. For Caroline, believing and trusting in God played a vital role in her decision to embark on such an adventure. As she described it, "to be ordinary is to operate in your own ability; to be an ordinary radical, is to reach beyond what we can achieve by our own strength and operate instead by faith".

Like Wendy in last month's cafe session, Caroline urged listeners to discover their passion through talking to others and then to embrace opportunities to get involved with that passion. In other words, learning to say "yes". You may not know where that yes will lead, but Caroline encouraged us with a verse from Proverbs: "Trust in the LORD with all our heart and lean not on your own understanding."

In this way, she also encouraged us with the words of Oswald Chambers, not to dwell on the scale of the challenge ahead but rather to draw inspiration from what has already come to pass:

"The needs are so enormous, and the conditions so difficult, that every power of the mind falters and fails. We tend to forget that the one great reason underneath all [efforts to foster peace and justice] is not primarily the elevation of the people, their education, nor their needs, but is first and foremost [a response to the saving sacrifice] of Jesus Christ."

Join us next month for the third and final session in this brilliant series, when we'll have the fantastic Mr Ash Chafe sharing his experiences of life as an ordinary radical living on a local estate. That's Wednesday 21st November at Coffee Republic in N Finchley from 7:30pm.

Do also join us for our pub session on the 7th November, when we'll be discussion how we Look Out to invite and include new members into the network. We have a vision to be a community of thirty to forty people regularly coming together to be inspired and equipped to change the world (plus plenty more connected into us via email, Facebook and the website). Come along to share your ideas for expanding our reach and get some tips on how to talk to others about JM. Full details to follow shortly.

Looking Up

While our cafe sessions this term will be exploring what it means to be an ordinary radical, our Autumn pub gatherings will look at how we can develop and improve the network itself.

Part of the founding vision for Justice Matters was a determination to see the local church back at the forefront of the call for social justice. Anyone who shares our passion for social justice has been welcome to join us in this endeavour - we are eager to uphold our vision to be "unashamedly Christian, accessible to all".

Wednesday 3rd October, 8pm
This first of three pub sessions will therefore explore how we look 'Up' and include elements of prayer and worship in our gatherings without alienating non-believers and those of other faiths. In future sessions we'll explore how we get better at looking 'In' to care for each other, and 'Out' to engage new members.

We'll be meeting at the Bohemia in North Finchley at 8pm but bring a warm coat as we'll be heading out on a practical exercise before coming back for a warm drink and discussion.

See you there!

The world I want to see

Last Wednesday, some of us went along to a panel discussion inspired by the forthcoming Rio+20 World Summit. The speakers - including Caroline Spelman MP, Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, and the Rt Rev Peter Price, Bishop of Bath and Wells - were asked to speak on the subject of 'the world I want to see' and then engaged in a lively Q&A session. Sara, Lizzie and Sam were tweeting avidly, so you can find more by looking up the #FaithinRio hashtag on Twitter.

First to speak was Caroline Spelman MP, who began with a review of what has and hasn't been achieved since the original Rio World Summit in 1992:

"[The original Rio Earth Summit]was a turning point in the way the world looks at the links between the environment, development, and the economy. There has been progress on poverty alleviation, with significant improvements in access to water, education and healthcare in all regions of the world. Many businesses have embraced sustainability issues, and renewable energy has grown substantially.

Yet substantial challenges remain. Approx 1.4 billion people around the world still live in extreme poverty and those who were the poorest 20 years ago are still the poorest now. Environmental degradation continues, and sustainability has not been integrated fully into economic decision making."

Spelman highlighted that in just three year's time there will be an extra one billion mouths to feed. By 2030, DEFRA forecasts that water, food and energy will all be stressed. Each of these are potential flashpoints for conflict as well as sources of suffering. We do not have the luxury of time; we need Rio+20 to hasten change that benefits the most disadvantaged. But growth should be about more than just raising GDP, she said; well being and quality of life should also be indicators of success. For these reasons, the minister pledged that the UK would to push for a meaning set of sustainable development goals (SDGs) to be agreed in Rio.

DEFRA have posted her whole speech on their website, so you can read what she said in full if you are interested.

Next up was Steve Waygood of Aviva who spoke on the need for better corporate social responsibility within the global business community. He said that consumer power was an important way for the masses to shape the behaviours of the multinationals, but since

"90% of the data on business responsibility is missing [from public scrutiny]"

holding businesses to account and making informed investments is hard. To solve this, Aviva are leading a broad coalition of businesses and other stakeholders to pushing for corporate accountability and sustainability. At Rio+20 they will be seeking agreement on a transparency framework to that will reveal the true state of an organisation's corporate sustainability. As Waygood himself put it: 

"Corporations should deploy their vast resources to improve lives, not just profit margins. Paying tax is just the start."

Third in the line up was Nanette, a lady working with CAFOD in the Philippines. She spoke about the importance of meaningful collaboration between communities, local government and local church to effect sustainable development, identifying that:

"ordinary people, anointed leaders and elected leaders need to take on responsibility and accountability."

She was especially keen to stress that sustainable growth must be socially just; Rio+20 must not be about developed countries making decisions about developing countries without their say or involvement. In the same way, she argued that while the Green Economy held great promise for the development of underdeveloped parts of the world, to deliver change that benefits local communities and not just shareholders, those green technologies should be in the hands of local communities, not the multinational corporations.

The presentations closed with a rousing statement from the Bishop of Bath and Wells, who spoke with great passion, challenging Christians to stand against poverty, the arms trade and the military industrial complex. He encouraged those present not to fritter away their potential but rather to spend their lives doing something that changes the world. After all:

"We can't just have a concern for poverty," he said, "we have to act to end it."

Watch the Bishop's speech in full:

Throughout the presentations and the Q&A that followed, we were reminded that the impact of climate change is not a future problem; for many in the developing world it is a real problem today. It was clear that amid financial meltdown in Europe, ongoing conflict in the Middle East and political scandals at home, keeping sustainable global development and the ambitions of Rio+20 high on the public agenda is going to be a struggle. Struggle we must however, for as Caroline Spelman identified in her closing statement, the charge we have is to leave the planet in a better condition that we received it.

Blessed are the peace makers

Captain Kirk and the cult of just warfare

The thing about the original series of Star Trek is that, regardless which sector of the galaxy they were exploring, or which homogeneous planet they landed upon, it always ended in a scrap - usually between Captain Kirk and a bloke in fairly unconvincing make-up on an equally unconvincing set. Looking around at the current crop of summer blockbusters, its clear to see that this model - the good guy overcoming evil by force of arms - remains a central theme in our culture. From Bond to Batman, Iron Man to Avatar, the forces of good invariably prevail through a combination of righteous valour, luck and vastly superior weaponry.

Let’s face it: in our culture, good guys with guns are cool. Under fire and outgunned, they always prevail and the forces of evil - whether alien robots, international criminals or rogue scientists - are brought low.

This idea of heroic combat is not limited to the silver screen - in Afghanistan, Libya, Iraq and elsewhere we can see real men and women taking up arms to fight injustice. Just like in the movies, our media has painted a black and white world full of good guys and villains for us to cheer for and jeer at in turn. As a consequence of this narrative, in recent months we have seen Americans gleefully celebrating the assassination of Osama Bin Laden while NATO forces are bombing Libya for the protection of civilians. Indeed, we even find ourselves pondering whether assassinating Gaddafi isn’t perhaps the best way to end the stalemate and suffering in Libya?

Wrestling with pacifism

As a man, I have to admit that military hardware and martial heroes like Bond are strangely alluring. As a student of history, I am aware of many occasions when not standing up in the face of injustice would seem not to be not only counter-intuitive but unforgivably negligent. We need only think of the Second World War, or the Rwandan Genocide. However, the problem with this whole narrative of Just Warfare and martial heroism is that it lies in direct contradiction to Jesus’ teaching on peace and justice. As such I find myself wrestling with pacifism and increasingly identifying myself within that school.

In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus proclaims: “Blessed are the peace makers, for they shall be called Children of God.” (Matthew 5:9) It’s just one sentence among many now familiar and powerful phrases. Its quickly read and passed over, but it’s worth spending some time considering more closely.

Sermon on the Mount in context

The Sermon on the Mount was delivered in a context of imperial subjugation by Rome and domestic political unrest. There is some disagreement about how significant the Roman presence was in first century Palestine, but it is clear that Jerusalem - once a great centre of influence - was now little more than a backwater town on the fringes of civilisation. While some Jews were happy to keep their heads down and make do, others were less than satisfied with the status quo.

Banditry was common in hinterlands and border regions where government authority was ambiguous, where peasant gangs reacted to their lack of opportunities and influence by ransacking the homes of the wealthy out of spite. Often the leaders of these bandit gangs would portray themselves as a kind of royalty, wearing purple robes and stolen crowns - the Godfathers of Galilee.

Another group responded to Roman rule with

more organised insurrections. The most famous of these movements was the Zealots. The Zealots staged several violent revolts including one around 4 B.C. in Sepphoris, the Capital of the Galilee and home of the wealthy elite, only four kilometres from Nazareth. The revolt was crushed by the Romans; hundreds of people were crucified or sold into slavery. Since Nazareth was a thoroughly peasant village, it is likely that at least some Nazarenes were sympathetic to the revolt and perhaps even participants with the Zealots. This event would certainly have been a traumatic part of the collective memory of those listening to Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount.

A third brand of resistance was apocalyptic prophesy. Charismatic, prophetic individuals attracted followers by using symbolism from Jewish liberation history to preach the imminence of the restoration of Israel by divine action. One such prophet lead his followers from the wilderness to Jerusalem where he promised that by marching around the city, God would act on their behalf and overthrow the Roman occupation of Jerusalem. The prophet sought to re-enact the people of Israel's journey from slavery to freedom and Joshua's triumph over Jericho to provoke similar divine action on behalf of first-century Jews living under occupation.

Among the crowd it is possible that each of these types of people were represented and indeed most will have expected Jesus himself to fall into the final category - the apocalyptic prophet preaching doom to the Romans and puppet regime. However, the message that Jesus brought - blessed be the peacemakers - rejects violent action (whether by man or God) and challenges his listeners to embrace a different path.

In this teaching and others, Jesus challenges us all to adopt a response to conflict that is more constructive and ultimately more difficult than taking up arms. In his own life, he responded to persecution and violence with love and self-sacrifice that perplexed, frustrated and transformed the lives of his enemies (as well as costing him his own). We have convinced ourselves that fighting evil with force is a righteous response to injustice - that we are the good guys standing against the evils of the world, but we should remember that Jesus never said "Greater love has no man than this: to kill those who oppress others”.

A creative response to conflict

Responding to aggression with peace sounds mad, especially in light of the injustice we see on the news every day, but it is perhaps not as foolhardy as it first seems. The illusionist Derren Brown - a man with a particular insight into the human character - tells an interesting story in which he confounded a violent aggressor.

"A couple of years ago I was walking back from a hotel at three in the morning. A guy came up to me looking for a fight. Rather than playing the authority game he was trying to set up, I said to him 'the wall outside my house is four foot high' to confuse him. His eyes glazed over and all the adrenaline left him. He was still on the verge of hitting me but then I said 'but when I was in Spain, the walls were really, really low.'

"What I did induced a state of complete confusion and in that state you're desperate for something to make sense so that you come out of it. He burst into tears and I ended up giving him advice on how to cope with his girlfriend - they'd had a fight."

Now I’m not arguing that Derren Brown is a perfect role model, but this story illustrates that when Jesus promotes a non-violent path, it doesn’t mean we have to tolerate violence or to ignore it, but rather we should find ways to respond to it creatively.

Peace

Whatever our intention, however well meaning we may be, we cannot make peace through conflict. At best, tensions are suppressed, but they remain unresolved, waiting. Ultimately, even the best intentioned violence only ever leads to more violence.

However, not doing anything is no a response either. Well meaning words and platitudes are equally unhelpful - especially to those suffering. As the Derren Brown story illustrates, to be true peace makers is to embrace our creativity and confound evil with love.

The United Nations

Last summer, Victoria and I visited the UN in New York. Throughout the building are provocative quotes and statistics about the state of the world and the work of the UN. One of the quotes that stood out was from Eleanor Roosevelt, who said: “It isn’t enough to talk about peace. One must believe it. And it isn’t enough to believe in it. One must work at it.” Another observed that “Like war, peace must be waged.”

In light of these rousing statements, it was distressing to learn that the total annual UN peace keeping budget is less than 0.5% of all global military expenditure.

It was former American President and General Dwight D Eisenhower who lamented the rise of military spending at the expense of tackling injustice in more creative ways. In his final speech as president he reminded the world that: “Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies in a final sense a theft from those who hunger and are not fed – those who are cold and not clothed.”

Eisenhower was right that there are better things to spend our resources on that weapons or war, better ways to bring justice than with the sword and semi-automatic. Spending more on peace keeping isn’t the answer however, since it still conforms to the idea of meeting violence with violence, or at least the threat of violence.

No, the role Jesus challenges us to embrace is not that of peace keepers, but peace makers - an active, creative posture. But what on earth does that mean? How do we rise to this challenge? Must we wander into conflict zones with face paints and footballs?

Life as it should be

The truth is that we can be peace makers wherever we are. Although so far we have been considering peace in terms of the absence of armed conflict, the Hebrew word for peace - SHALOM - is not limited in this way, but rather refers to things being ‘as they should be’. As Radiohead might put it, peace, shalom, means everything in its right place.

This is not a new commission that Jesus presents to his audience. Being peace makers - shalom makers - was a role that God entrusted to Adam when he charged him to tend the Garden of Eden in Genesis. Being a good steward of creation is to cultivate Shalom - to bring harmony, balance. Later in Genesis, Abraham and his family were charged with modelling Shalom - life as it should be - to the nations.

In light of this legacy, Jesus’ encouragement to be peace makers becomes more accessible - if still challenging. To be a peace maker is to bring shalom, which means to bring healing and wholeness, to lives, people, the world. To bring shalom means deliberately looking for the shattered, the hungry, the lost, the down-trodden, and to act in such a way as to bring change.... to feed, to liberate, to raise up. Therefore, when Jesus calls us to be "peacemakers," He is calling us to be the ones to bring healing and wholeness to a broken world.

Justice Matters

Being a peace maker therefore is to do more than talk the talk. But where to start?

Since January this year a small group of friends have been gathering in coffee shops and homes around Finchley to wrestle with this very question. Out of this small gathering of activists, optimists and ordinary radicals has grown Justice Matters - a new community for people seeking to make a difference, an effort to start doing something - however small our individual contributions may be.

Justice Matters held its first public gathering before the summer. We had 25 people join us to

discuss the social justice issues close to their heart - from poverty to sexual violence against women, water and sanitation to political oppression. The theme of the evening - aside from being an opportunity to meet some like-minded people - was to encourage one another that our individual efforts to be peace makers are not lone acts of delusional hope in an ocean of darkness, but rather form vibrant sparks in an incandescent network of shalom bringers. Together we can - together we are - making a difference.

Making even the slightest dent into these global problems may seem impossible, but the worst thing we can do is not act because the task seems too great. Even one step for the better is worth taking: Every hungry person fed and watered, every woman rescued from sex trafficking, every older person granted dignity, every tribesman given economic independence, every child immunised against a preventable disease - each of these is a victory for shalom.

When he calls us to be peace makers, Jesus reminds us that the Kingdom of God is more than well-meant words and a warm glow inside. Rather it is a call to action. In the Church we can be guilty of thinking that praying against injustice is enough. Certainly, prayer is vital - we cannot achieve real change in our own strength, but as Shane Claiborne writes in the book Follow Me to Freedom:

“When we pray for the hungry, let’s remember to feed them. When we pray for the unborn, let’s welcome single mothers and adopt abandoned children. When we give thanks for creation, let’s plant a garden and buy locally grown fruit and vegetables. When we remember the poor, let’s reinvest our money in micro-lending programs. When we pray for peace, let’s beat our swords into ploughshares and turn military budgets into programs of social uplift. When we pray for an end to crime, let’s visit those in prison. When we pray for lost souls, let’s be gracious to the souls who’ve done us wrong.”

 

Don't worry if you feel small and that you have only a little to give. As the environmental activist Julia Butterfly Hill says: “The question is not, ‘Can you make a difference?’ You already do make a difference. It’s just a question of what kind of difference you want to make."

Live Below the Line - Update

Today is Day Two of my Live Below the Line challenge and its going pretty well so far.

Over the weekend, my lovely wife and I worked out a menu for the week - three square meals a day and even deserts, all for just £1 each a day. Keeping it below £10 and healthy was hard, with plenty of items coming on and off the shopping list as we honed our menu to be as lean and efficient as possible. Even as a couple who are used to planning a week's food at a time, working with such a small budget meant it took much longer than normal.

The shop itself was equally time consuming, with lots of selecting and weighing veg to make sure we found the cheapest choice. Although we are doing this to raise awareness of people in extreme poverty overseas, the experience of working with such a small budget raised my empathy for those struggling on low incomes in this country.

The week before last I was queuing at the tills behind a lady for whom our challenge this week was clearly her everyday experience. Repeatedly asking the cashier to run a sub-total on her shopping, she kept having to remove items from the belt to keep below her budget. I hope I exuded quiet compassion as I waited behind her, but I fear that my mere presence, witnessing her struggle to make ends meet, may have heightened the humiliation for her. As someone who has never had to face that kind of hardship, this week of self-imposed struggle is teaching me as much about loving my neighbour across the street as my neighbours beyond the sea.

A Community for Social Justice?

On Wednesday 5 January 2011 Victoria and I met with a group of friends and fellow rabble-rousers at the Elephant pub in North Finchley to discuss the possibility of forming a new Missional Community around the theme of social justice. After introductions, we used variously shaped post-it notes to capture our passions, skills and initial ideas. A survey of these post-its revealed a range of passions, including:

• Inspiring action – challenging apathy, raising awareness, envisioning and empowering
• Meeting practical needs – water and sanitation, housing
• Championing equality – including wealth, opportunity, rights of children and women
• Fighting poverty – at home and abroad, Fairtrade and economic development
• Sustainability
• Building community and relationships
• Theology.

In terms of the talent, those present were well equipped to support the running of a new Community, with project management / administration, publicity / social networking, event management and listening / mentoring / enabling all mentioned on the post-its.

In discussing ideas for what sort of things such a Community might do, there was a clear agreement that our meetings shouldn’t simply be about listening to speakers (though this will no doubt form part of our activities), but should balance hearing and doing. Suggestions included:

• Hosting public events with guest speakers (eg. Tearfund, WaterAid, Burma etc)
• Getting involved with wider campaigning opportunities, such as World Walk for Water
• Holding prayer meetings for global issues – might be directed at rallying church(es) or perhaps something accessible to outsiders
• Hosting film nights to show thought-provoking movies or documentaries (perhaps in association with Co-op and the Phoenix Cinema) with post-screening discussion (and prayer?)
• Running / joining a reading group (perhaps with similar aims to the above)
• Running a regular Justice Café with proceeds going to fight poverty
• Hosting an Unfair Games event in partnership with Active Barnet or Barnet FC / Saracens / London 2012
• Assorted practical activities such as litter picking, adopt-a-nursing home, English lessons for refugees
• Short-term mission to international development-related partners (such as Helping Hands, Compassion, Feed the Hungry, Habitat for Humanity).

Having read and discussed our passions, skills and ideas, we moved on to explore some of the finer details of how such a Community would function, what it would do and how it would meet the framework set out by Henry, Colin and David.

A clear voice for justice
One of the key questions was about the balance between seeking social justice locally and campaigning for it internationally. The majority opinion in the group was that international campaigning was a must, predominantly because of the great need beyond our own borders and also because international issues are perhaps more accessible, making it easier to attract new members to the Community. Whether the group adopts one cause at a time or several remains the topic of further discussion.

Some voiced concern that setting up a Community centred on social justice absolves the remainder of St Bs from engaging with such issues. To avoid this, we propose to model ourselves as an ‘MTF’ for social justice - that is to say, a community of passionate individuals and friends who will provide leadership and structure on the matter of social justice within St Bs, raising awareness of the issues and creating opportunities which will enable others within the congregation (and beyond) to play their own role.

In addition, there was agreement that while the local Church does need to be corralled into a more visible position on social justice, this Community was primarily about connecting with the wider community of Finchley, not just the church goers, enabling everyone to get involved in making a difference to social justices. Given Finchley’s population it is reasonable to believe that there will be folk out there who are interested in getting involved with a group like this. Moreover, with influential, educated professionals living locally there is a real opportunity to shape culture and policy not just locally but across the capitol region. For some, this Community may provide focus and structure for their existing campaigning activities; for others it will provide the tools needed to help them turn goodwill into practical action. This will be a core purpose of the Community - to help local people who want to do good but aren’t sure where to start.

A role in sowing social justice locally
Although many felt that the Community’s primary focus should be speaking up for international, there was a clear sense that some local action was required. However, what form that local action would take was less clear. On one thing we were agreed – we (and presumably many others in the church) didn’t understand enough about local needs to decide a local cause. It was suggested that it would be valuable for those present to spend some time investigating local needs and perhaps use this learning to highlight needs to others in the church. In this way our Community could serve a practical role in raising awareness and supporting the development of other St Bs Communities centred on the needs we identify.

Thinking about taking action locally, there was uncertainty as to how much could reasonably be achieved in one night a week (assuming that the Community was to meet fortnightly and only half the sessions would be dedicated to local issues). Likewise, there was concern that most causes would be disinterested in ‘hit-and-run’ help.

Some possible options options discussed to address the local element of the Community were:

• Research and gather information about local charities and ask members of the community to commit to volunteering at one or more in their own time. Give frequent opportunities for people to feedback and share what they are doing and to provide accountability.
• Advertise ourselves to local charities and organisations as an available resource when they need extra help for extraordinary occasions such as larger campaigns or events. Engage with CommUNITY Barnet and Barnet Pledgebank to identify one off volunteering opportunities that would benefit from our manpower.
• Give members ‘homework’, challenging them to carry out ‘tiny acts of good’ that sow genuine community during their everyday lives (for example introduce yourself to your neighbour, plant bulbs in the garden of your block of flats, befriend your supermarket till clerk etc).

For some of those present, there was clearly a desire to dedicate more time to local issues than international campaigning. It was suggested that these individuals might like to get together to pray about the possibility of forming a Community that centres more directly on a local need into which they might pour their energies.

A Community with soft edges
We did begin tentative discussions about the rhythm or structure of the Community’s gatherings, voicing a desire to be radically inclusive of all members (Christian or otherwise). While we understand that the leadership have proposed a model wherein the Community meets twice a month - once for a public event and once for a more traditional celebration - we were concerned about drawing such a stark division between the Christian and non-Christian members.

While no clear alternative model has yet been defined, it is our hope that the each of the Community’s gatherings would faithfully and unashamedly reflect the faith which has inspired its existence without creating a boundary between the Christian and non-Christians members. In this way, we hope to live out our faith openly and develop genuine, inclusive relationships with all those in the Community, allowing them ownership of the group's activities and development. In this way we hope to avoid a sense of those who are ‘in’ and those who are ‘outside’ and instead generate a culture where we welcome people wherever they are at and draw them along on our journey.

The City and the City: Thoughts on selective blindness and radical community

In a city as full of life and activity as London it is all too easy to turn a blind eye to those individuals, places and realities that threaten our comfortable, middle-class experience. China Mieville’s recent book, The City & The City deals with this very issue – the human tendency to train oneself to ignore the Other; to edit the poor, needy and undesirable out of our daily narrative.

In Mieville’s book, two strikingly different cities co-exist in the same space, interwoven in a complex tapestry where citizens of each city studiously do not perceive the people and places which belong in the other place. Consequently, residents of Beszel walking through the streets of their faded industrial metropolis must unseeingly navigate their way among citizens of Ul Qoma – the thrusting new technopolis which is geographically (or ‘grosstopically’) present among them and yet politically alien and therefore distant.

In each city, citizens are trained to identify the cultural idiosyncrasies of their countrymen – the fashions, styles, and gait – enabling them to discern who in the crowd is part of their own society (and should be seen) and who is from the other place (and therefore should not). Some streets and spaces are duplicated in both cities (so-called ‘cross-hatched areas’), but other places are exclusively in one city or the other – entirely invisible and off-limits to residents of the other city.

Mieville’s novel is a gripping and creative thriller which tells a story unlike any other I have read. Moreover, it makes a provocative argument about the extent to which city-dwellers (and indeed all societies) turn a blind eye to those people and places which disturb their world-view; those people who don’t fit neatly into our preferred experience. How easy it is to ignore the beggar, the rough sleeper, the drunk, the person in need. Like the citizens of Beszel and Ul Qoma, we are well trained by society to read the habits, behaviours and attire of others and therefore engage or erase them as appropriate.

As followers of Jesus, we develop spiritual eyes that help us see through our culturally-imposed blindness. Rather than confining the poor to another place beyond our sight and responsibility, we seek freedom from that unconscious training which renders the deprived and unwelcome invisible and, in seeing them, we allow ourselves to be impacted by their suffering. For only when we see and understand those in need can we love and serve them.

The selective blindness described in Mieville’s parable is not limited to our relationship with the poor. It also challenges us about our interactions with those who are different from us in other ways – the veiled Muslim, the city banker, the conservative evangelical, the elderly, the struggling single mother. As city-dwellers it is easy to retreat into tribal cliques which exclude and deride non-members of our own homogenous club; groupings which define themselves as much by who they are not as by who they are. For Christians, the risk is that we too find ourselves living in exclusive communities – holy huddles – that seek to advance the interests of our own tribe (the Church, or worse, our own church) at the expense of other groups. This is not the way it should be. As William Temple said, “the Church is the only organisation on earth that exists for the benefit of those who are not its members”.

At my church in Finchley we are actively grappling what it means to exist for our non-members – to serve the whole community and create spaces that are welcoming to all. This is an exciting and uncomfortable journey as we seek to transform our current models and structures to reflect the needs of the thousands of C21st Londoners who live around us.

In The City & The City, citizens seeking to bring down the invisible walls between Beszel and ul Qoma are deemed to be in Breach. As we seek to pierce the veil that condemns the capital's poor to another place, and also bridge the divisions between London's various tribes, we consciously step into that dangerous space which straddles cities – a foot in each camp, drawing the two together. After all, Christians are used to living with dual citizenship - resident here and now, but citizens of another Kingdom and another City that is now but not yet.

Up through the cracks in the concrete

The revolution rises.

Hordes of soundbite politicians roam Westminster professing progress with their words but denying it with their lives. Media jackals haunt the streets, rooting through the recycling to feed their voracious appetites for suffering. They devour their own young on a capricious whim; the dark lords of celebrity fate. High above, in the glassy towers and gilded boardrooms, oil barons and money men plunder the planet's pockets, turning its own riches against itself.

And all the while, weary and disenchanted, the world yearns for something different.

Rumours of revolution abound.

Quietly but irrepressibly, revolutionary souls subvert the status quo, reclaiming and recruiting communities into their revolutionary fold. The tendrils of this revolution spread far and wide, bringing the hum of new life to the ruins and rubble. Green shoots of change break through the concrete jungle, creeping up through the cracks in the pavement, disrupting the carefully maintained constraints of the prevailing system.

The revolution rises.

Its faithful followers don't just sell light at the end of the tunnel, but see the diamonds sparkling in the grimy walls along the way. They collaborate, co-exist and conspire to create lasting change. They have a vision for the future, not just more of the same. Their lives are lived in community; not just knowing their neighbours' faces but their names and their stories as well. They are a new humanity; humankind 2.0.

The revolution rises.

These revolutionaries embrace technology, adopting and adapting rapidly to integrate new tools and toys just as their prehistoric forebears once did. They live on the wire, as comfortable navigating the twitterverse as the tube map. However, they are not consumed by consumerism, nor deafened by digital broadcasts. Their lives are more than the sum of their playlists and podcasts. They delight in discovering the wild heartbeat that sounds in untamed open spaces; they marvel at the stars that exist beyond the mask of city smog.

Such individuals celebrate their membership of the global village, but lament the exploitative implications of globalisation, the systematic corruptions that make our lives better at the expense of others. But they don't just lament: they act, they speak, they go and stand alongside the poor and the broken. There are no boundaries or borders that can stop the revolution; it is inexorably laying claim to the whole world.

The revolution rises.

Nations fall, politicians falter, but the revolution will continue. It is a perpetual rediscovery. A society turned inside out and outside in at the same time. It is radical yet non-violent, unheralded yet long-awaited.

It is Quantum and it has arrived.