Common Awards Webinars

Webinar 4: Being Interrupted: Reimagining the Church’s Mission from the Outside In

• Webinar 4: Being Interrupted: Reimagining the Church’s Mission from the Outside In

  'Being Interrupted: Reimagining the Church’s Mission from the Outside In’. Ruth Harley and Al Barrett  in conversation with Sanjee Perera about their book of the same title. 
  

  • This webinar took place on Tuesday 23 March, 2-3pm, via Zoom, on the theme: ' Being Interrupted: Reimagining the Church’s Mission from the Outside In’. Ruth Harley and Al Barrett  in conversation with Sanjee Perera about their book of the same title. A BSL interpreter was present throughout the seminar.

    
    

    Here's the publisher's description of Being Interrupted:

    "Beginning with a ‘Street Nativity Play’ that didn’t end as planned, and finishing with an open-ended conversation in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, Being Interrupted locates an institutionally-anxious Church of England within the wider contexts of divisions of race and class in ‘the ruins of empire’, alongside ongoing gender inequalities, the marginalization of children, and catastrophic ecological breakdown.

    "In the midst of this bleak picture, Al Barrett and Ruth Harley open a door to a creative disruption of the status quo, ‘from the outside, in’: the in-breaking of the wild reality of the ‘Kin-dom’ of God. Through careful and unsettling readings in Mark’s gospel, alongside stories from a multicultural outer estate in east Birmingham, they paint a vivid picture of an ‘alternative economy’ for the Church’s life and mission, which begins with transformative encounters with neighbours and strangers at the edges of our churches, our neighbourhoods and our imaginations, and offers new possibilities for repentance and resurrection.”

    Though rooted in a Church of England context, this is a book which has a challenging message for many other church contexts as well.

     

    The authors, Ruth Harley and Al Barrett, will be in conversation with Sanjee Perera, recently appointed as the Archbishops' Adviser on Minority Ethnic Anglican Concerns.