fulcrum conference liverpool

Fran Beckett
Chief Executive, Church Urban Fund

Introduction

1. Church Urban Fund heritage and achievements - mission amongst the poorest people in our urban areas, passion for justice, relevant community engagement, built confidence and capacity of local churches > £56 million distributed to over 4000 local initiatives, and leverage of at least £8 to every £1 given by CUF.

2. New Church Urban Fund - enabling the mission of the Church in areas of the greatest poverty wherever they are (tackling wider issues through programmes, burrowing down into pockets of poverty, grant aiding local projects); new partnership working with the dioceses and other organisations that can add value to local activity; flexible funding, leverage of additional funds; capturing local learning and disseminating it across the Church, also conducting research as evidence for other potential funders to gain their support; advocating to Government and others for the contribution of the Church at a local level, with local people who are part of the community being part of the answer to intractable social ills.

3. "One of the assumptions has often been that the Christian gospel is first and foremost a personal matter. It is indeed personal; equally it is corporate. It is about changing both human hearts and social structures. God sets us in families and communities. It is part of the lesson the big city has to teach us that 'being members one of another" (David Sheppard - Built as a City - 1985 edition)

4. The Bible starts in a garden and ends in a city - our final Christian destiny, something so breathtakingly amazingly beautiful we can only get glimpses of it, is that of ending up in the heavenly city, a place full of God's glorious presence and life!

5. What does this mean for the present? Jeremiah 29:7 exhorts us to actively work for the welfare or the 'shalom' of the city. Shalom is a full warm rich word meaning well-being in every dimension of human existence and relationships. Here we're also encouraged not just to work but to pray for the city indicating that our welfare is somehow intimately tied up in this too.

6. In the Gospels we find Jesus deeply moved, weeping over the city of Jerusalem expressing his deep longing to gather the people to himself. These verses and others point us to the vital importance of Christians catching the vision of what God wants to do in our cities, and of committing themselves to do something about it.

Differences since Faith in the City

1. Government agenda - investment into neighbourhood and child poverty; their approach to the role of faith communities; increasing role of the voluntary and community sector; urban policy ambivalence

2. Church's priorities - importance of the urban not very evident; maintenance, morality or mission; financial pressures; focus on countering decline

3. Global/local affect e.g. people movements; changes - think instead of 'flows' that impact and shape communities (mission implications)

4. Contrast between African, Korean, etc expressions of Christianity - our western focus on rationality, reasonableness, and over-confidence in human capacity

5. Networks v. neighbourhoods - significant numbers for whom locality is about people and networks not geography, and the implications for those who are poor who tend to not move outside of a radius of a few miles

6. Dominant theme in our world now is the clash of civilisations (Islam/Christianity) - confirmed people's suspicion that religion is a dangerous force; debate over integration and implications for faith schools - implications for mission in an age of 'tolerance' particularly

Opportunities that we now have

1. Incredible mission opportunities on our doorstep - the world on our doorstep

2. Incarnational approaches - recovery of monastic traditions, rules, traditions and the implication e.g. 24-7 Boiler Rooms, the Order of St Thomas > discovery of fresh ways of authentic Christian community in an increasingly disconnected society

3. A good news story to celebrate - in an increasingly sceptical age the importance of the church 'being good news' (scale of local activity is one of the Church's best kept secrets!)

4. Opportunities through Government programmes and policies for engagement and access to resources

Challenges

1. Mission shaped church - incarnational v. attractional approaches to church

2. Fresh expressions of church - relevance to poorest urban communities - indigenous and incomers, locality and proximity spaces

3. How to be engaged but retain distinctiveness re Government policy, its outworking, and funding programmes

4. Other faiths - challenge of urban areas and also rural racism

5. Church of England seeing itself as broker and gatekeeper to official resources, as first among equals but the world is changing and the action is moving > having to come to terms with and learn how to operate within a move to being one among many

6. Whole Church issue (attitudes, beliefs, priorities) - theological training, financial and people investment, lessons to be learnt and applied

Conclusion

Give the last word of challenge to David Sheppard himself:

"It is still substantially true that the Church has been unable to establish a strong, locally rooted Christian presence among the groups society leaves without voice or power. The poor often feel that the Christ the churches preach is not for them..." (Built as a City - revised edition 1985 by David Sheppard). The question is - is this still the case, and if so what are the implications for us in the early years of the 21st century?

And the last word of hope to "You see things as they are and ask 'why?' but I dream things that never were and ask 'why not?' (George Bernard Shaw)