Tim's blog

 Final Lent Course - Asylum

So last night we gathered again for our Lent Course - ‘Are we washing our hands of England’s poor?’.

Tonight we talked around the issue of asylum.  The first part of our discussion was helping us to understand the terminology and definition of some of the words we were using - asylum, migrant, refugee.  What do these words really mean?  Who is an asylum seeker?  What circumstances have led women and men to be labeled in this way?

Did we know any asylum seekers or refugees?  We didn’t.  We considered why.   Read more »

Well, that was a tricky old discussion tonight. We were all over the place. I suspect the difficulty was that talking broadly about young people is a massive subject and something that we found very difficult to do justice in the short time that we had together.

We began by talking about the issues guided by one of our group who happens to be a midwife. She talked about her experience of seeing young parents who face childbirth and some of the acute difficulties that they face. She described how she and her colleagues make no assumptions about the folk that they encounter and circumstances that they might find themselves in. Read more »

Another full house for the second week of ‘Are we washing our hands of England’s poor?’, the Church Urban Fund Lent Course that I’m running.

This weeks theme was ‘forgive us our debts....’ a discussion around the theme of debt and unemployment. On Twitter @Clairemaxim1, who is running the course at her church in Southampton, commented ‘That was a very good session of #Lent course on debt #CUF. Got people talking really well.’  Got people talking! Blimey, what an understatement, we had 90 minutes of challenge, anxiety, subversion and radicalism.  Some of this was coming for people who present as ‘sweet old ladies’ but speak with the passion and verve of any resident of the Occupy camp. Read more »

On Monday I led the first week of one of the Lent Courses at St Paul’s, Winchester.  This year St Paul’s has offered people a whole smorgesbord of Lent reflection activities including the Church Urban Fund’s ‘Are we washing our hands of England’s poor?’

Have a look at the materials for our 2012 Lent course.  It is we ask the question ‘Are we washing our hands of England’s poor?’.  We’ve asked this question because when people read the tabloids, they can easily be left with the impression that there is no real poverty in this country.  Those who claim they are poor are condemned as scroungers and benefit cheats; lazy freeloaders taking advantage of our generous welfare state. Read more »

Today saw the launch of Near Neighbours at St John’s Bethnal Green.

Of course, many people already know about Near Neighbours.  At Church Urban Fund we have been working with our partners for over a year to develop the idea, share that idea with others and then secure the resources needed to turn it into action.  Over 100 people, many of who have an active role to play in the delivery of the programme gathered to ‘introduce to the public for the first time’ Near Neighbours.  And it felt good.

Often these events can be - and there is no easy way to say this - dull.  But today everyone in the room shared an infectious enthusiasm for a programme which will bring real change to four areas of England.

(Quick description - Near Neighbours aims to bring people together in diverse communities to help them to build relationships and collaborate to improve the community in which they live. Social action combining with social interaction).

Baroness Margaret Eaton, Chair of the Near Neighbours charity, set the tone with her contagious enthusiasm, before the Bishop of London described how Near Neighbours "will provide important evidence" of the contribution faith makes to the common good.  This clearly resonated with Ramesh Pattni who talked about the Hindu ethos of the ‘Universal Family’ of Man as people relate with friendship, trust and respect.  

But the real buzz in the room came as Bethnal Green resident Fulma Begum was interviewed by London Co-ordinator Tim Clapton on the difference Near Neighbours is making on her estate - local people taking the initiative to build and deepen relationships across faiths.

We then heard from Eric Pickles, who metaphorically rolled Near Neighbours down into the water saying ‘we are celebrating the next chapter of the same centuries-old, proud and unbroken tradition of people of faith giving back to their local communities’

So why did our launch event feel good?  Well it in itself it was just another programme launch.  But, I think the difference with Near Neighbours is that today a group of people met that are animated about what they do, motivated by their faith and feeling that they at the start of something that will be very important indeed for this country.

Why I send my Christmas Cards in November!

I got a Twitter message last week that said ‘Got my first Christmas Card today - from @timbissett and the nice people at CUF-seems caring for poor & disorganisation not always together!’

I’m pleased that caring for poor and disorganisation are not synonymous because caring for the poorest people in England is too important not to take very seriously indeed.

Why did I send my Christmas Cards out in November?  There are many reasons - but particularly I wanted to send a card with a message that churches can act upon before Christmas and to say ‘thank you’ at the same time. (This Christmas card went to every member of the Anglican clergy in England).  

My message is simple.  The church needs to act together if it is going to tackle poverty in England.  The news headline’s are shocking - unemployment, homelessness, riots - but at Church Urban Fund we remain committed to the firm belief that one day, through working together, every church in every community will join us to tackle poverty.

So - if you are still thinking about carol, crib or christmas services, check out www.cuf.org.uk/resources-churches to download prayers, reflections and other materials that might be just be useful.

Now, if I’d told you about this the week before Christmas - you’d have had no time to get organised.  Hence by Christmas Card in November!

We ought to be very proud about what is happening on the steps of St Paul’s Cathedral at the moment. It’s the politics of the people and if we are lucky it will be the shape of things to come. Vested interest, money, tense argumentative gatherings, principled objections and resignations are all what real politics are about. The impact has been positive in raising the issues. What needs to be demonstrated now is how those issues can be safely (and safely is important here) negotiated to some sort of positive and empowering conclusion.

Over the last thirty years, we have lost the art of politics. We have found ourselves imprisoned in a consensus that says markets know best, that the only response is simply that our future is determined by the playing out of market forces. Despite some of the brightest minds in the Church and beyond developing highly insightful critique there has not even been the slightest dent in the consensus. What has happened to us all is that we have slowly lost the art of doing politics – not the manipulative position-taking of Westminster – but the principled negotiation about how we live together peacefully and create relationships that let us all flourish.  

It’s good – even though it probably doesn’t feel like it to those involved – that the Chapter of St Paul’s has had such a public disagreement. Thank God there is at least one example where people can hold different views without violence or the false compromise of most of the stuff that passes for politics in our ‘democratic’ institutions. This is a real sign of hope in the changes we are seeing around us at present in the economy and wider society.

We live now in what can best be described as a market state in which the economy and our systems of government have merged into one. We see signs of this everywhere - in care homes and hospitals in the NHS, where quality of care is secondary to price, in the way the benefits of the very poorest are cut to bail out banks, in the way even very basic freedoms have to give way to financial considerations. On one level, of course, there is nothing wrong with markets - they give us what we need to get on with our lives and they appear the least oppressive way to distribute goods and resources. The flaw in the thinking is to believe that they can do everything.  If all of us are to flourish, markets must always be subject to the wider control of politics - here understood as the will of the people. This is a difficult thing to do - to be brave enough to ask difficult questions about what sort of world we want to live in and then see them though – and at St Paul's we have seen just that.

The real issue here, though, is the recognition that the Market State is focused around the single-minded pursuit of wealth. The ferocity of this pursuit of wealth has left us exhausted but it has also deprived us of the trust, the generosity and the compassion that really do underpin well-being in a good society. The whole structure of what we have at present in our society is aimed at keeping itself going and maintaining things much as they are. Most people are wary, pessimistic and cynical about where we are headed but still they wait in the hope that something or someone will come along to save them.  The way things gets challenged is through good quality politics - the negotiation of difference, the challenging of vested interests, the living our of principles and the recognition that it's values rather than money that makes us flourish – in fact just the sort of debate that has been going on in the Chapter at St Paul’s.

At Church Urban Fund we have realized that the only way this will come about is when people recognise that the future is in their hands. The idea that all we can do is wait for things to change is a recipe for more of the same. It's as people wrestle control back, and take seriously that it's only by their own agency that things will change, that we will begin to shape a better future. The issue is simple. We lack control: we need to take it back. We are up for this: come and join us.

Here are the notes that I used for a presentation that I gave to the Places of Worship Alliance yesterday.  I

Today I have been asked the question - how places of worship should be engaging as the Big Society idea is being translated into policy.

At the end of this talk I hope to have shown that our energies need to go into hospitality and transforming lives and building bodies of people committed to work for change.  That here we find we will find the building blocks of the big society.

I. Attention:

One of my favourite pastimes has been collecting the words of government ministers, Bishops, journalist and other commentators as they attempt to describe what is the Big Society.

Stephen Bubb CEO of National Association of the Chief Executives of Voluntary Organisations said

The idea of the Big Society is a bit like the idea of the Holy Trinity: even when it's explained to you, you still don't really get it.

Toby Blume, CEO of Urban Forum said of the Big Society Policy that it was an attempt to marry State and Community.  He said it is ‘something old, something new and something borrowed and something …. Blue’

Lord Wei - The government first Big Society czar said, 

"The Big Society policies are about nurturing an ecosystem. I describe this as the Big Society coral reef ... it combines the seabed, which is the bedrock of our public services - to protect the vulnerable - and then the coral, which is represented by the many current and future providers of those services. Last but not least is the fish that feed in these waters, the local citizen groups that can extend, vivify and shape this landscape in ambitious, as well as humble, ways. No single part of this landscape can or should dominate, but by working together it comes to form a whole that is more than the sum of its parts."

Rt Revd Bishop John Pritchard, Bishop of Oxford

“Christians have always had a vision of Big Society, but we’ve called it the Kingdom of God”

“What is being missed is the recognition that what Cameron wants, the Church already does. He is walking on our territory without realising we have been there for years. It is what we do.” Rt Revd Nick Baines, Bishop of Bradford

Luke Bretherton, Theologian and adviser on the Big Society

“Whether they like it or not, in the eyes of the coalition government, [churches] are already enacting the big society policy agenda.”

II. Need:

So are we as churches doing the Big Society whether we like it or not?

Have Church and State come together in a timely marriage of shared understanding and a unification of the policy agenda?

It was the faith groups churches that started the first hospitals, schools, social welfare charities, hospices, homeless shelters and so on. ...  But can they do it today?  

...At a primary level this Big Society stuff is not a problem.   Visiting the housebound and elderly, engaging with young people, setting up networks of "flu friends" - all that is business as usual. ...  There are credit unions and food banks, street pastors and night shelters all over the country, run by the churches and other faith groups. 

...CUF has been supporting Big Society projects for 25 years.

We have over 5,000 examples of Church based Big Society projects…..

Narthex in St Johns the Evangelist, Birmingham – it has a weekly older people’s lunch club, parent and toddler group and homework club in the church hall as well as running a refugee advice drop-in and also a refugee foodbank in the church itself (using a shipping container on church grounds as storage facility).  www.narthex.org.uk

St Peters in Walworth, London – The crypt houses a community café, an IT suite and training facilities – it does significant work with young people and knife crime, afterschool clubs and homework clubs, parenting courses, food and gardening project - http://www.in-spire.org.uk/ 

Camborne Parish Church, Cornwall http://www.cambornechurch.org.uk/ Has set up Drop In and Share – a daily drop-in for homeless/addicts in local area (as a response to people hanging round in church yard) – police have reported a drop in petty crime whilst this is operating – it has also enabled them to renovate an outlying building (old school building/scout hut) into a training facility for ex-homeless.

 These are areas where the church is at it’s most effective.    We bodies of people -  churches - who are in relationship with one another extending their network of relationships out into the wider community.    Some call this kindness, some call it social action – others, dare I say, mission.    But it is all gospel work - sharing good news especially to the poor.

It's at tertiary level where things become more complex because a more sophisticated professionalism is needed and we run into problems of regulation and irregular funding.   However, in the Church, we have respected organisations working in counselling, adoption, homelessness, mental health, the empowerment of women and lots more.

But does this add up to what David Cameron envisages by Big Society? 

It depends on the nature of the contract he wants to make with the faith communities.   If there's a desire for partnership and funding support, then there's a wealth of experience and good will to tap into. 

But if we're being asked to fill the gap because the government has run out of money then it's likely to be no deal.

Churches can offer stable, committed volunteers all over the country. ...  In there DNA is a drive to engage others in what they do.

But they can't pretend to be the NHS or a social work department, nor must they. 

...So - We do the Big Society pretty well.

But should we collude with the Government agenda - the latest political fad?    I think that faith groups represent a movement that is far bigger than authors of the big society policies ever imagined.

Working with the Church of England and Church Urban Fund has developed a programme called Near Neighbours.

In a nutshell the idea is to bring people together who are near neighbours in communities that are diverse, so they can get to know each other better, build relationships as people and collaborate together on initiatives that improve the local community they live in.

...Social interaction - to develop positive relationships in multi-faith areas i.e. to help people from different faiths get to know and understand each other better.

Social action - to encourage people of different faiths, or no faith, to come together for initiatives that improve their local neighbourhood.  

What is key to the programme is that we are absolutely resolute to be distinctive in what and who we are.

Baroness Warsi ...‘Through the Government's £5m investment in the Church Urban Fund's Near Neighbours programme, we are putting our money where our mouth is - not through a top-down intervention but by using the existing infrastructure of the Church of England to build productive local relationships between people of different faiths in four key geographical target areas.   People of any religious background will be able to bid for that fund through their local Anglican parish, to run projects that improve their local neighbourhoods with people from all faiths working alongside each other.   The programme is an excellent example of partnership working.’

...But what of our buildings - our Places of Worship.    How do we use our assets to engage?

Well I offer two words through which we should filter our engagement… radical hospitality

...Our Places of Worship are exactly that – Places of Worship.    They are designed for that purpose – although many can do other things – either simultaneously or separately.  

Churches have a vital role to play today.  ...  We have other things – expertise, ideas, creative thinking, even (sometimes) money.

The key question is how we use them….   And particularly today how to we use our buildings.

We claim churches are rooted in the community, but how welcoming are we to the needs of the people we purport to serve?

I believe the lens we show use when looking to how we use our buildings is through this notion radical hospitality.

Hospitality, in every sense, generous and freely given, should be the key to how we envisage our buildings.   We want to be radical in demonstrating that the root of all we seek to be, and do, is found in the love of God.   The God whom we worship is alive and well in every human person.   God who knows no boundaries; He is present everywhere and is made known in the gift of loving wherever love is seen. 

Let’s be bold and imaginative in the ways we use our buildings – what can be done to create a network of welcome centres – centres for the arts, media, welfare, community, play – whatever we can turn our hand to.

...Are our places of worship welcoming and hospitable?    I guess some are and some aren’t.  

We are entering, I believe, a new season for the church and for all Places of Worship.    Through policies like the Big Society the government are knocking at our door.

The world is experienced by many as a place for strangers, where dislocation, fragmentation and even hostility are found all around.   But many long for a place where life can be lived without fear and where friendship is available with an open hand.

Radical hospitality means throwing open the door of our churches and saying – ‘you are welcome’.

Radical is "getting to the root" or "arising from the source." ...  One who is radically committed to something goes beyond the norm, exceeding ordinary expectations.    A practitioner of radical hospitality might go the extra mile, to "take welcoming the stranger to the max."

Hospitality has to do with the physical and with space.    Physical space as well as psychological and spiritual space.    The physical space is often more important than we give credit for.    When we enter a Place of Worship or a home or any public space we read the signals and signs that that space presents. ...  In the words of the Clash do we say to people entering a place of worship  - ‘Should I stay or should I go now?’

They key to reviving our buildings is to focus on the people who use them.  

...They are resources to be used for the transformation of live, community and to build that thing we call the Big Society.

Our buildings are where stories are made.    I want to see more Blue Plaques on our Places of Worship that tell the stories of those who use them and have used them.  

...So my call – as we bulid this Big Society – is that we are generous in offering our resources for all to use and are flexible in our view of ‘what’s right or wrong for a church building’.  

Who can use the building?    Classical music good, rock music bad, ceilidh good, rave bad, children's parties good, teenage parties well ..... of course not....

Are all welcome?

So – the Big Society, yes let’s do the Big Society and see it as an opportunity to be radially hospitable and build relationships in our needy world.    Our Places of Worship place us in a uniquely privileged position to welcome people and to be there for them.

Next week we are hosting a gathering for community leaders that live in some of the areas affected by last month’s riots.  We’ve invited members of the clergy, community workers and local activists to spend 24 hours sharing their stories and reflecting on the unrest and the impact it had on them, their work and their communities.

We hope this will be a key event where we will gather evidence to present to government, policy makers, funders and to the House of Bishops.

We are working closely with our good friends at Church Action on Poverty, who, like us, want to understand what churches in riot-affected areas are confronting, and inform Government about their response.

This is all very good. But it is only the beginning of a longer and more detailed discussion that we hope to encourage during the coming months.

Alex Kirby, writing in the Times said ‘The Church of England needs to think again how it can help the inner-city poor and money is not the answer. After the urban unrest in England in the 1980s, a Church of England commission produced a report, Faith in the City. That led in turn to the establishment in 1987 of a charity, the Church Urban Fund (CUF), which since then has distributed about £65 million to faith-based projects. You may conclude that every little helps (the total cost of running the Church of England is just over £1 billion annually), but with the CUF’s silver jubilee approaching next year — and the return this month of riots and looting to city streets — perhaps it is time to rethink the fund. What CUF does is well worth doing, not least as a token of religious commitment to the poor. But if it could double its funding (hard, as individual contributions make up much of its income), it would still make little practical difference in a society where 3.8 million children live in poverty (and more than 13 million people altogether). The inner cities need far more than religion alone can offer. Faith in the City was the work of the Archbishop of Canterbury’s Commission on Urban Priority Areas. If Rowan Williams is wondering how to build on Robert Runcie’s initiative, CUF is an obvious starting point. It does more than simply channel money to projects; also offering training, networking, research and other resources. It funds some non-Anglican projects, even some run by other faiths. It is small, but it is a good deed in a naughty world. What else might it do?’

What else might it do indeed? This gathering represents us taking this challenge forward. We are seeking to build a body of people committed and active in tackling issues of poverty in England today.

How? Well money helps but I believe it is only through time, action and prayer can we begin to make an impact and a difference. Gatherings like this give voice to Christian activists. Though Church Urban Fund we can speak to the heart of the issue and, simultaneously, to the Church and government.