Category: Faith (Page 1 of 5)

I prayed for every single newly elected MP

July 7, 2024 / Benjamin Welby / 4 Comments

A screenshot from a web application showing a hexagonal grid map of the United Kingdom completely filled with red heart icons, representing each constituency. At the top, it says 'Constituencies left to pray for: 0' on the left and 'Constituencies waiting for prayer: 0' on the right. In the centre, there is a message that reads 'You have finished praying for the 2024 intake of UK MPs.' Below this message is a green button with 'Amen' and a prayer hands emoji.

A different kind of party

Recently God changed my plans for election night and inspired me to spend my night praying for each constituency and every MP. So we opened up Boon Café and Zoom for a watch party focused on prayer over punditry.

After the polls closed and before the results started to come in we prayed and worshipped. I had planned to bring Post Its and give space to lament over policies and poor governance. But I forgot them. And that was a blessing. There was still space to mentally and emotionally clear our prayer decks without spending too long on the shortcomings of the past. Fixing our eyes on Jesus was a much better way to spend our time before the first result popped up.

When it did I was grateful to Philip Brown and Alasdair Rae at Automatic Knowledge for sharing the hex map in a number of formats. Every time we prayed for an MP we could add a heart to our A0 poster, as well as automatically to the web app I’d built with the help of ChatGPT and data from Democracy Club¹.

My Pre-election Prayer Walk through Croydon

July 1, 2024 / Benjamin Welby / 3 Comments

On Sunday evening when I would normally have been watching England pull a rabbit out of a hat against Slovakia I was walking and praying the streets of Croydon.

I set off on this 15km/10m walk after Croydon Vineyard’s 4pm service. My route followed the boundary between the 4 Parliamentary constituencies of West Croydon, South Croydon, East Croydon and North Croydon and Streatham. When I first thought this would be a good thing to do I thought I’d do the perimeter of the 4…that would have been 60km. Something to do but over a period of time I think.

Migration in Christian Perspective: Notes

July 1, 2024 / Benjamin Welby / 1 Comment

On Wednesday 19th June 2024, the Sanctuary Foundation hosted a half day conference at St. Mellitus College called “Migration in Christian Perspective”. With some of us gathered in person and many more tuning in from all over the world it was a fabulous afternoon of insight and wisdom drawn from the experience of some stellar thinkers and practitioners.

The materials from the event will come in good time (and I’ll link to them) but hope these notes are an encouragement or of value for others.

All these shared with the caveat that any of the mistakes and errors are down to my transcription and not the people speaking! I also didn’t take notes for every session so this is a partial record.

I’m excited for #GE2024, but not for the reasons you might think

June 26, 2024 / Benjamin Welby / 4 Comments

I don’t know what you’re thinking about #GE2024, or elections in general.

A lot of us are cynical and disdainful, perhaps to the point where politics is an active sore in our lives, and the lives of those around us. There’s plenty of reason why our feelings about government and governing should provoke our grief, rage and distrust.

A lot of us are apathetic. We’ve been disappointed too many times to keep seeing any merit or relevance to the whole exercise. Maybe it was a struggle to even read beyond the word “election” . If that’s us then we probably won’t vote. And nobody could lay any of the blame for that decision on us.

A lot of us still have some optimism about politics and policy, or at the very least recognise its potential for achieving particular goals. Some of us have active roles in a party. For others we might stick a poster in the window or an emoji on our socials. It could be that our commitment to our party or policies means overlooking the means so long as we achieve ‘our’ ends in battling an injustice and delivering an important cause.

I’ve worked in and around government for 15 years. That limits what’s possible in party political terms¹. But if you spend enough time with me then I will more than likely have tried to persuade you that it’s important for Christians to care about the quality of how government goes about its business.

It’s a core part of who I am. I have a recurring prayer that “those who govern the world would fall in love with the values of the King and His Kingdom”. I’m even writing a book with my friend Dave that’s intended to be an encouragement to Christians by offering a hope-filled, faith-inspired perspective on democracy and how we’re governed.

So that means I’ve been anticipating this election for a long time, and frankly growing ever more restless at the need for change. I can’t say I’m impressed with these last 5 years (or with much of several previous electoral cycles to be honest). Once the election was announced I was looking forward to the night of July 4th into July 5th as being one of enjoyable schadenfreude².

But then a couple of Sundays ago God challenged me in a moment when I was supposed to be listening to a sermon but was in fact being distracted by an email.

The FaithTech Playbook: A Redemptive Approach to Tech

June 25, 2024 / Benjamin Welby / 0 Comments

Technological progress has always shaped society and today is no different. It infuses everything, everywhere (even in the depths of the Amazon rainforest).

It affects the things we see and recognise and use. And it affects the unseen influences that shape our day to day lives without our realising it. As a Christian, thinking about the relationship between technology, digital practice and my faith has added an extra layer to my work helping the public sector do good things with digital.

Genesis 1:27 tells us everyone is made “in the image of God” and I see that spark of the divine reflected in how everybody explores their love for the world and those around them. When I had the opportunity to join GDS I had no idea that I would find Kingdom values and Gospel practice cropping up in user-centred design and the government design principles but I believe they do. I’ve contributed some of my thoughts on “Faith in Technology” in an interview with my one-time colleague Richard Sargeant for his podcast Faith in Action. For a time I was part of an advisory group to the Church of England on their digital work. And I got involved with Kingdom Code at its outset in order to meet other Christians in the world of tech (the 2024 hackathon is coming in October).

And yet somehow I had missed the existence of FaithTech and the work they’re doing to create a global network of Christians in tech.

Welcoming Well: thinking Christianly about asylum policy

June 19, 2024 / Benjamin Welby and Andy Brims / 3 Comments

This is a piece I co-wrote with Andy Brims. Andy is part of the team at Croydon Vineyard Church and has directed Vineyard English School since 2019. VES provides free conversational english classes in Croydon, and has welcomed hundreds of asylum seekers and refugees since its inception in 2015.

Under the auspices of Vineyard English School we recently hosted a roundtable on ‘Welcoming Well‘ which surfaced the idea of a Framework for Feeling At Home which you might want to look at in conjunction with this piece for practical ideas of how you and your community might respond to the needs of refugees and asylum seekers in your midst.

The Human Face of Asylum Anxiety

In the nondescript hotel lobby that doubles as a makeshift classroom each Wednesday, Tariq¹, a new student lingered after our English class. Anxiety lined his face as he pulled us aside, his words tumbling out in heavily accented English. “Am I going to be sent to Rwanda?” he asked with fear in his voice, “I’ve got a domestic worker visa…my wife is pregnant”. His raw vulnerability highlighted to us the grim reality facing those navigating the asylum process in the UK.

A couple of weeks previously Farhan² and Ayesha*³ had met us in a similar state of panic. For months these educated professionals and their eldest children had been regularly attending our sessions while their two youngest settled into local schools. Yet now the Home Office had told them they were to be relocated, immediately, to somewhere in the country they didn’t know, as though they were a problem to be solved, not people to respect.

What makes you feel at home?

June 7, 2024 / Benjamin Welby / 4 Comments

The image shows a vibrant and welcoming scene outside a building. The building resembles a church with a large banner displaying the phrase "Welcoming Well". There are diverse groups of people, including men, women, and children, interacting and socializing. Some are sitting at tables enjoying food and drinks, while others are standing and chatting. The setting is lively and inclusive, reflecting a sense of community and togetherness. The background features urban elements with a mix of nature and cityscape.

After leaving the OECD one of the things I’ve been doing is volunteering with our church’s English School. And specifically I’ve been supporting the weekly classes run by Andy inside one of the hotels providing accommodation for asylum seekers.

This experience has been both humbling and incredibly impactful. It’s been such a privilege to spend Wednesday mornings with a diverse collection of people looking to the UK as the place where they want to build a new, safe, life. Our classes have ranged from 4 people to over 30 and in total I’ve met with over 100 people from more than 25 countries; all of them eager to improve their English.

You won’t be surprised that I didn’t support the anti-immigration rhetoric of the political right even before I joined my first class. But I really don’t think it would take more than a couple of mornings spent with these men, women and children for those that do to conclude that much of the way these needs are portrayed is warped and distorted. As you get to know people trapped in the limbo of asylum and learn about the obstacles people face, even after being recognised as refugees, I’m confident they’d actually become passionate advocates for wholesale renewal of our discourse and our practice.

Unfortunately, it’s going to take time to rethink our response to the needs of refugees and asylum seekers. So my prayer and hope is that a future government builds its policy from a place of compassion and grace. And that they recognise the worth of the individuals at the heart of the asylum process.

‘Honour the emperor’

November 10, 2016 / Benjamin Welby / 2 Comments

It is easy for me to write this as a middle class, white Brit for whom oppression is not something I’ve ever directly had to put up with. My response is therefore more theoretical than what faces people who are already reporting the sorts of post-Brexit hate we had here. I hope I would always seek solidarity, not safety.

Prayer

We spent last night at Central London Vineyard in solid prayer, bothering God about the state of the world.

It was challenging. Challenging to reflect on our own divided country as well as the one across the Atlantic. Challenging to think that most of the world’s desperate people don’t care who’s in the White House or what the EU looks like. And very challenging to hear first hand testimony of recent events in Calais and the treatment of those unaccompanied children who had found some small refuge in the Jungle.

And in all of that it was challenging to respond to the words of Jesus:

‘Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you.’

Code for the Kingdom challenge: community

September 2, 2015 / Benjamin Welby / 2 Comments

On the weekend of 2nd October Christians with a passion for digital technology are going to gather in 14 cities* on 5** continents for the first ever global Code for the Kingdom hackathon.

I’m part of the Kingdom Code team organising the London event, we’ve got a great venue (the Westminster Impact Hub) and we’re hoping for a good turn out of both professionals and enthusiasts. With just over 4 weeks to go the anticipation is rising (have you got your ticket yet?).

The team in the USA have already secured world-class virtual mentors and this week announced the six sponsored global challenges (#wearables, #purity, #minorityChristians, #games, #virtualreality, #generosity) for people to aim at.

We’ve also come up with some challenges of our own for London: #Christmas, #spiritualdisciplines and #community.

We’re eager to see what London makes of all nine challenges but personally I’m particularly excited about the #community challenge.

We all know that we’re living through an incredible period of technological advance. The digital revolution has completely transformed the way in which we not only stay in touch with our family and friends but also in how we forge, and maintain, connections with (former) strangers.

Frothing at the mouth, this time it’s Creation

July 19, 2012 / Benjamin Welby / 3 Comments

I’ve previously taken my fellow Christians to task for taking a story and then misrepresenting the substance (‘Christmastime, mistletoe and lies‘). Given how central Truth is to Christianity we should be renowned for our integrity without recourse to swearing to prove it (‘Swears‘).

We fall short of those standards, all the time, and it’s unreasonable to hold those on the outside to a higher bar than we set ourselves. Nevertheless, the rhetoric that says Christianity and Science are at odds and completely divergent is, bluntly, either casual ignorance or wilful misrepresentation.

This week it’s the free schools that will fill the minds of impressionable children with the not-worthy-of-the-word ‘science’ of Creationism. And when that word rears its head then most people instantly associate it with the Young Earth beliefs (that I don’t share) lampooned to good effect by Ronson, Theroux, Gorman et al.

I’m not going to rehash what The Church Mouse has written, suffice to say it’s a massive +1 from me over his concerns with the presentation of this story and the treatment of known fact (rather than future, paranoid conjecture).

What Mouse doesn’t get into but what strikes me about the ridicule levelled at Christian Creationists is how it undermines Christianity’s delight for you as who you are.

A different kind of party

The Human Face of Asylum Anxiety

Prayer

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