Category: Faith (Page 1 of 6)

A dimly lit restaurant kitchen features three elegantly plated dishes on a counter, each garnished and ready for service. In the background, two chefs in white uniforms are seen working, focused on their tasks amidst the bustling kitchen setup. The atmosphere is lively, with various kitchen tools and equipment visible.

When the first plates leave the pass

June 16, 2026 / Benjamin Welby / 0 Comments

There are some jobs you leave because the evening has ended.

The plates are cleared. The conversation has run its course. Someone is stacking chairs. It was good, perhaps even brilliant, but it’s clearly time to go home.

Leaving DWP has not felt like that.

The image I’ve had has been of walking out of a busy kitchen in the middle of service. Everything simmering away nicely on the stove. The ingredients good. The chefs knowing what they are doing. The smell promising. And yet, for reasons that are right and good and exciting, and of God, leaving before dinner was served.

Except that, last Monday, the metaphor shifted slightly.

Because some of the first plates are now leaving the pass.

The Prime Minister used his London Tech Week speech to announce a new AI jobs tool to help people out of work find the right jobs, create their CVs and get back into work. He was referring to the new experimental Work Hub, with its AI work assistant, CV builder, action plan, jobs board, and support for employers.

Some of this is new. Some of it is remaking things government has had around it for a long time. Some of it is very much at the start of its life. That’s why the experimental badge is important. It’s also why it’s brave. DWP has made something visible early enough for people to use it, test it, misunderstand it, criticise it and improve it.

So have a play, test it to the limits of your amusement, and maybe you’ll be pleasantly surprised, maybe you’ll learn something actively helpful.

Still, given what is being imagined for the eventual menu, this is very much the hors d’oeuvres.

But I’m no longer in the kitchen.

I’ve taken off the apron, stepped into a different kind of work, and now find myself watching the first plates appear with a strange mixture of joy, pride and longing.

A woman in a long, patterned skirt sits on a stone bench under a large tree, while a younger man in a light-colored outfit sits next to her. They are engaged in conversation, with the tree's lush green leaves providing shade. In the background, there is a brick built church and grassy area. The scene is peaceful and inviting.

Strong branches and good shade

May 28, 2026 / Benjamin Welby / 1 Comment

A report that should arrest us

This morning Alan Milburn launched the Young people and work interim report. I tuned in to hear his speech and the follow-up Q&A, and I’d recommend you find the time not only to read the report but to listen to him speak to it.

It is arresting stuff. Not only because of the scale of the crisis being described, though the scale is staggering, and not only because of the policy detail, though there is plenty there worth wrestling with. But what especially struck me today was the moral seriousness with which Alan spoke about young people who are quietly disappearing from participation in the life of the country.

Over the last phase of my time at DWP, I shared my time between the team supporting this review and the jobs and careers service. Mine was a small contribution in the scheme of things, but enough to see at close quarters the seriousness, care and determination Alan and his team have brought to it.

It also means I am not a wholly impartial observer. I want this report, and the final report coming later in the year, to be read carefully, argued with seriously, and met with a level of response that matches the gravity of what it describes.

Because this is a report that asks important questions:

What happens to a society when more than one million young people are outside education, employment or training?

What happens when the pathways into adulthood no longer reliably function?

What happens when institutions each hold fragments of a person’s story, but nobody holds the whole?

And perhaps most importantly: what kind of country are we becoming if we learn to normalise this?

The review’s argument is not that this requires a temporary focus or a short-term policy tweak around the edges. We’ve been here before, oscillating between panic and amnesia. We briefly notice a crisis, announce something, fund something, brand something, and then move on before anything has changed.

No, the argument is that there has been a structural break in how young people move into work, confidence, belonging and adult life, and therefore structural change has to be the response. And that means harder questions to answer about institutions, relationships, participation, and the kind of social fabric that is required for young people to flourish.

This should arrest government.

But that is the minimum we should expect from a report like this.

A man in a suit smiles next to a man with long hair and a beard, wearing a robe and a hood. They stand outdoors with historical buildings in the background. The text above them reads, "What if Robert Jenrick hung out with Jesus?"

What if Robert Jenrick hung out with Jesus?

September 7, 2025 / Benjamin Welby / 1 Comment

So much of the current public discourse leaves me with a heavy heart, and Robert Jenrick’s recent interview with The Spectator is another depressing contribution. It might be worth reading the full thing because it provides important context for what follows but in short it tells a harsh story about deportations, “rudimentary prison” camps for asylum seekers, net emigration, and suspending both visas and foreign aid. It is a story of scarcity, suspicion and punishment. It doesn’t sound like justice, mercy, humility, love for neighbour, or hope for renewal. It doesn’t sound like good news.

And yet Jenrick makes a point of mentioning faith: “I do believe in God. But I’m not at church every Sunday. I take my children to church, my wife sometimes takes them to synagogue.” Faith here is less like the pearl of great price that Jesus spoke of, and more like a virtue signalling badge of pseudo-respectability.

What I don’t hear is a man who abides in the love of Christ.

But it left me thinking how extraordinary it might be if he did abide. If he found the treasure hidden in the field, if his politics and his life left people thinking about good news? Not out of some misguided Christian Nationalism and delight at the theocratic imposition of the ‘correct’ policies. No, because it would mean his own personal story would be of life lived to the full.

And why not have some better policy to go with it?

In previous posts on what makes us feel at home, on welcoming well and thinking Christianly about asylum policy, and on migration in Christian perspective, I have tried to sketch a different vision specifically when it comes to questions of immigration – one of hospitality, abundance and neighbourliness.

So I was minded to reimagine Jenrick’s words in the spirit of kingdœmocracy. You don’t need to have read the interview first but it might give you a frame of reference for the alternative. What would it sound like if a senior politician spoke not from fear but from faith? If his words reflected the overflow of love from his heart and were humbly shaped by joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control (which is what we mean when we talk about being ‘guided by the Spirit’)?

Perhaps his interview might have sounded more like this:

A split image featuring two scenes: on the left, a woman in a yellow shirt passionately singing in a church setting with a cross in the background; on the right, a smiling woman in a green sweater is engaged in conversation with a man at a desk with a "jobcentreplus" sign visible.

Singing of the Goodness of God… and of the State?

May 20, 2025 / Benjamin Welby / 3 Comments

At church this weekend we sang the worship song Goodness of God

All my life You have been faithful,
All my life You have been so, so good…
With every breath that I am able, I will sing of the goodness of God

And in the middle of worship I found myself wondering whether anyone could ever sing the same about public institutions.

All my life, the state has been faithful
All my life, public administration has been good to me

It may have surfaced because I’d been able to make some progress with PrayReps this week. Or perhaps because of my day job helping the Department for Work and Pensions to design a new approach to providing jobs and careers support for the country. A life-long companion to help people navigate work, whether they’re seeking their first job, having a mid-career reinvention, or easing into a well-earned retirement.

What would it take for one of our future users to say: “All my life, it’s been good to me. It didn’t fail me. It was there”.

Praying for representatives: US edition

December 9, 2024 / Benjamin Welby / 1 Comment

Over the last year Dave and I have been kicking around the idea of “Kingdom Democracy” (or maybe kingdœmocracy) as we try to encourage our fellow Christians to adopt a hope-filled, faith-inspired perspective on democracy and how we’re governed. We haven’t quite managed to write the book yet, but it has been brilliant to take things that we know in our bones and put them into words.

It’s also been a powerful exercise in challenging me to put what I believe into practice at a personal level. That led to my prayer walk along the boundaries of the Croydon constituencies, the election night prayer watch party, the time spent praying for every one of our new MPs and subsequently trying to turn that tool into an actual product called PrayReps at Code for the Kingdom BUILD.

I was hoping PrayReps would be online by now. It’s not there yet, although good progress made with the underlying data. Going back to work has definitely slowed progress. So, no product on the internet but I did repurpose my old locally hosted ChatGPT-assisted code for the US Presidential, Congressional and Gubernatorial elections. Now, with the final result finally being confirmed at the end of last week I can finally publish this blog post.

It’s a blog post in three parts.

I prayed for every single newly elected MP

July 7, 2024 / Benjamin Welby / 7 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 / 4 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 / 3 Comments

This post is one of several I’ve written discussing immigration in light of rooting my life and politics in following Jesus. Please add your thoughts on What would help you to feel ‘at home’ in a new environment or consider this longer piece about ‘thinking Christianly about asylum policy’ that I wrote with my friend Andy who heads up the Vineyard English School. If you enjoyed this and want to know about any new post please subscribe to my RSS feed or emails.

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.

I 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 / 6 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 / 1 Comment

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.

A report that should arrest us

A different kind of party

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