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How do we follow Christ in a post-Christendom context? And when public faith is suspect, what does it take to shape our bit of God’s world toward shalom?

We often say ‘be in the world but not of the world’ or ‘like the men of Issachar, read the signs of the times’. But what does this mean practically for my local street and the places I work and play? We need fresh vision to move past the platitudes and embrace God’s mission in a godly way. Neither taking over nor retreating, what does it look like to truly bless and love my neighbours?

We often look at the whole landscape of society when we think about shaping culture – the heights of fame, the highest levels of politics, the pinnacles of business achievement. But in order to wisely traverse the cultural peaks, we first need to map our own day-to-day frontline’s tricky contours and chart a path following in Christ’s footsteps. We need new words and new ways to reach our particular time and place.

This experimental forum will guide you there. Provocative stories, holistic theology, practical wisdom, a community journeying together through better conversation – this is a safe place to wrestle and test a hunch or three.

Ten months after George Floyd’s murder sparked Black Lives Matter protests, how might we lament together, seek healing, and find hope for a unified witness?

It’s time to stop perpetuating the idea we have to choose between believing ‘Black lives matter’ or ‘all lives matter’. Time to move past the tired binary of systemic injustice versus personal responsibility. Time to stop playing the blame game while nothing changes, sitting in silent collusion.

Like the prophets of old, we need eyes to see through the flames to ‘the fire that has been raging for over 400 years, consuming successive generations of Black lives’ as Leicester Cathedral Canon Lusa Nsenga-Ngoy so vividly reminds us. We need ears to hear in the riots the cries of the unheard, as Martin Luther King Jr declared a generation ago.

This is not simply someone else’s issue. As Azariah France-Williams revealed this summer in his new book Ghost Ship, institutional racism continues here at home, requiring reform among Christians so the whole UK church can truly become a place of Black flourishing.

We all agree, racism is evil and an affront to God. So how will we play our part? And what practices on our frontlines support this overdue reformation?