Part 2 of Ruth Valerio’s reflections on her plenary session at the recent conference on church and sustainable comunities, held at Redcliffe College on 1st March. Andy
‘The Word became flesh and pitched his tent among us’. I love that translation of John 1:1 from the Message Bible – it gets it in a nutshell. The incarnation is not about God working
into
an area, it’s about him jumping right in and living there.
When we moved onto the Whyke Estate nineteen years ago, we didn’t do so out of a sophisticated theology of the incarnation, we simply wanted to live somewhere where we hoped we might be able to do something positive, but now I see that the incarnation provides us with a model that sums up what we have (unwittingly for sure) been doing.
Too many churches and organisations try to work into particular areas. But there is no substitute for actually being in an area: living there, being present, not just turning up for a few hours and then going home again (and yes…
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justice, advocacy and reconciliation 