There is intense disagreement about the place of those who are lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, or questioning (LGBTQ+) in churches in contemporary Britain. Nevertheless, there are many LGBTQ + Christians who have a profound experience of God's love and acceptance. This study uses interpretative phenomenological analysis of interviews with four lesbian Christians to explore the aspects of spiritual formation that enable this. The findings show that their faith journeys mirror the process of disorientation and new orientation identified by Walter Brueggemann in the Psalms. Their theological struggle, their experience of rejection by other Christians, and the intensity of their faith journey lead to profound pain as well as a fresh experience of God's love. Evaluating this process enables theological reflection on the place of disorientation in spiritual formation and on the factors that enable a new orientation of faith.
I depict Congregational Studies as a multi-disciplinary field of study using the metaphor of a cairn. A sketch of the UK literature between 2005 and 2025 is offered, showing promising foundations upon which mostly individual researchers and doctoral students have placed studies that largely take an insider perspective and serve ecclesial ends. The contours of the literature in relation to discipline, methodology and tradition are sketched. The literature on five themes most prevalent in the literature of the last five years is summarised, and extrinsic questions are proposed to suggest a different way of viewing the significance of the field. I conclude that asking different questions may act as a beacon alongside the cairn, shedding light on the potential for greater collaboration between researchers, institutions and congregational practitioners, along with the denominations and agencies that support them.
Facing decline in Europe and America, Christian congregations and denominational leaders are looking for help. This article places the conversations of Strand Four of the Congregational Studies Symposium in juxtaposition with a case study of the New England Conference of the United Methodist Church: six states in the north east corner of the US I am clergy in the United Methodist Church and over the course of 20 years, I participated in four different programs to promote growth. These programs were John Vincent's Urban Mission Training Project, Equipped for Every Good Work by Dan Dick and Barbara Miller, Christian Schwartz's Natural Church Development and Phil Maynard's Shift. I was the pastor of three different churches participating in these programs and served as the coach of a church that participated in Natural Church Development. During these years, I took a break from pastoral ministry to enter a doctoral program that involved congregational studies. As pastor, I was turning to the seminary for better help with the declining churches I was charged to serve. The thick descriptions of these four programs, which drew upon Congregational Studies methodologies, provide an interesting counter point to the scholarly discussions of Strand Four. While matters of growth and decline are not the only issues of interest to scholars who study congregations, they are clearly the most pressing for those Western European and American congregations and denominational leaders in the midst of sharp decline. Leaders are looking to the experts to 'come over and help us'.
This article is a reflection on a set of methods, based on the BBC Radio 4 programme The Listening Project, developed for a collaborative research project exploring experiences of Joy among a small group of older Anglicans in and around Roehampton in South West London during the COVID-19 pandemic. The article introduces the methods of data collection and data analysis, says something about the modest distinctiveness of these methods in relation to existing methods and modes of practical theology and exmaines some of the insights into a theology of joy that the method started to surface. Joy was the theme of the project, the subject of the conversations, and the object of knowledge, and in a surprising way, the methods themselves had a particular capacity to generate joy.
One in four families in the UK is headed by a lone parent but there has been very little research undertaken into whether this figure is reflected in church congregations, nor about what single parents may value when attending church. This paper presents an exploration of what little is known about solo parents within UK church congregations as well as the benefits and challenges that church attendance can pose for this demographic. It draws on existing qualitative and quantitative research, statistics, and personal experiences of leading a peer support group for lone parents in an ecclesial context. The existing research suggests that going to church has benefits both for lone parents and their children, as well as identifying that there is a real paucity of studies into the single-parent church experience. The statistics reveal that there may be significant cultural differences linked to church attendance and the ethnicity of lone parents, whilst personal experiences indicate that whilst there tends to be widespread awareness amongst church leaders of the common challenges faced by one-parent families, these needs are not often responded to. Meanwhile, solo parents report themselves that they benefit from authentic fellowship and connection. This article constitutes the first meaningful attempt to understand the representation and experiences of single-parent families in UK churches on a national scale and it concludes with theological reflections on the significance of this question borne out by practice, as well as highlighting the need for further research.
This article engages with reflections on experiences of loneliness and social isolation of older people living in South Tyneside and the pastoral response of Churches Together South Tyneside. Of key interest is the learning that emerged in context of the Reflecting Together Project, a theological action research project held from November 2023 to November 2024. It addressed the concern that a fiscal approach in care imposes transactional encounters, which contribute to experiences of loneliness and social isolation of older people and carers alike. Similar patterns were found in the context of local churches. The claim is made that local churches have the potential to contribute significantly to the wellbeing of a local community by reimagining pastoral care through the practice of 'incidental contacts' and 'little communities'. Consequently, this article engages in a prophetic public discourse and offers practical theological considerations that both improve pastoral responses and speak to a society that diminishes the agency and full humanity of older people.
