We’re stronger together

by the Revd Hannah Cartwright

At the Sunday Forum last week we were delighted to welcome Revd Dr Keith Hebden from Citizens UK to speak to us about Community Organising and how it can help St Mary’s to work for justice with our neighbours across the City.

Community Organising is based on the principle that by working with one another on shared issues, small groups can, together, make a big impact on their community and achieve significant and lasting change for the better.

We explored what we felt about the world ‘as it is’ and the world ‘as it should be’ and recognised that to get from one to the other what we needed was power: power to make change.

Alone we can feel powerless to stand up to institutions or systems which are not working for us, but if we each lend our power in the service of others then together we can become a big-enough body to make change happen.

Just before Jesus ascended into heaven, he said to the Apostles that they should wait to be ‘clothed with power from on high’: the Holy Spirit which would come at Pentecost. Power has become a difficult word for many because we associate it with having power over others and, sadly also, with the misuse of power. But the power of the Holy Spirit is not necessarily about having power over, it is about having power ‘with’. Power which binds the Church together in unity and power in which God works with humanity for the benefit and renewal of all creation.

We have a vision of the renewed creation: of what the earth and human relationships can look like in God’s Kingdom but our challenge and mission is to join in with the work of the Holy Spirit to bring this vision to fruition in the here and now.

We are called to work with one another in the power of the Spirit to move from the world as it is to the world as it should be. Citizens UK gives us one model of how to go about this and work together with neighbours from other institutions, faith groups and community projects across Oxford to achieve meaningful change towards a more Kingdom-shaped world.

If you would like to know more and to keep up to date with our community building work at St Mary’s and across the City, then Hannah would love to hear from you.