James Woodward, our Principal reflects on our recent residential for Ordinands exploring Urban ministry in Southampton.
“Recently it was a great privilege to accompany our ministry students on a context visit to Southampton. The group reflections presented at the end of the weekend were rich, insightful and theologically creative. Students demonstrated a profound ability to be curious in their attentiveness to the city and the churches we visited who are engaged in care and compassion for those in need.
As a learning community this collage of encounters with the city gave us a deeper way into the contrasts and contradictions of life in an urban context where struggle, marginalisation and poverty limit and disfigure human flourishing. We saw churches engaged in building community and,with compassion and care, helping individuals and groups know something of the abiding truth and love of Jesus Christ. We were both humbled and transformed by what we encountered.
I was reminded of some words given to me by a Sister living in an enclosed contemplative community:
‘As in so many aspects of our life, the future is splendidly uncertain. Nothing is secure, except God. We have no abiding city. We are called into the wilderness to be perpetual pilgrims’
and this from the book Loving God Whatever (Through the year with Sister Jane) in her own words:
‘Patience, which allows people to change and situations to evolve and work themselves out; hope, which knows that time must eventually pass and that successive crises have been lived through before… And a sense of the ridiculous which can keep things in proportion and help us to apply in daily life the knowledge that God matters most to us all; these necessary virtues enable us to be open to surprises and ready for risks’ (p1)
Huge thanks to the churches of the Ascension, Bitterne Park, and St Michael the Archangel for hosting us, and to Revd Simon Robertson, Revd Mike Archer, Revd David Miller and Port Chaplain Kate Powell for all they so generously shared.
Students were asked to create group presentations reflecting on their experiences, and amongst their responses was this Spoken Word poem by final year Ordinand, Anthony Childs.
Protesters stick to their lines like toffee,
Parishioners wonder where they’ll get their coffee.
Dog collars on both sides of the road,
Electric bikes don’t care how you vote.
Shared hatred weighs us down like an anchor,
Shouts of “Starmer is a—”.
Suburbs spilling outwards, swallowing fields,
The broken-hearted searching for pills.
Table dancing, stripping clothes from the poor.
What is at your core?
Is Jesus present? Is he near?
Prayer in contested spaces—does he hear?
Transactional, transitional, transported lives,
Transformed by the love of a hi-vis smile.
Lego figures, plastic church,
Finding hope in second birth.
100 years, 100 more: voices rising, hearts restored.
Saints at home, cruise ships at berth—
Read it in the echo: haven’t you heard?
This is a place where Christ is at work.
You can see him perform it on his social media here: https://www.instagram.com/reels/DUlIMTYiqyw/