UK Urban Mission: a portal for resources, history and exploration of Christian mission in British cities
by Greg Smith - February 2022
Greg Smith, Associate Research Fellow at the William Temple Foundation, writes about his experience of urban mission and a new website for resourcing urban mission and ministry.
It is now over 45 years since I first became involved in urban mission and ministry, the first 27 years spent in various roles in the London Borough of Newham, the remainder in the smaller city of Preston in the North West of England. Although I recently reached the Biblical three score years and ten, and am officially retired, I am still enthusiastically involved in urban mission work, hands on in our local parish and more academically as commissioning editor for the William Temple Foundation Urban Tracts Series. In the first of that series I reflected on the Urban Mission scene in the UK over the 40 years since the first urban disturbances in Brixton in 1981, and the 1985 Church of England Faith in the City Report and traced the ups and downs of the movement.
The idea for UK Urban Mission Portal and the Urban Tracts series, emerged from discussions with a long-term friend and colleague Paul Keeble who has been involved in urban ministry in Manchester for almost as many decades. Paul, together with another mutual friend, Derek Purnell, and others had worked through a charity called Urban Presence to build networks of support and collaboration among urban church leaders and practitioners across the city. They had recently come to the conclusion that as key players approached retirement, the charity had served its purpose and it was time to close. Yet there was a desire to leave a legacy of experience and lessons learned, and to pass on the baton to the coming generation.
Our first intention was to run a number of farewell events and conferences. Everything was in place for a final day event in March 2020, only to be knocked into touch by the arrival of Covid-19 and the first lock-down. As everyone came to terms with the cessation of in person meetings and started to zoom through cyberspace, we concluded that we could best share experience and resources, by writing, by webinar and by providing online resources. So the website was born, in an attempt to bring together in one place a resource that was both an archive of urban mission in our own lifetime, and a celebration of some of the exciting networks and ministries that have emerged in recent years.
As Urban Presence closed as a charity it held a small amount of funding which they generously allowed to be used to pay for web hosting and domain registration for the first few years of the site. So throughout 2021 I got to work, with Paul and a few other colleagues offering feedback, collating and organising the wide range of material into what now appears in the UK Urban Mission Portal.
We have tried to design the website in a way that will be of use to various audiences
• Church leaders and Christian activists living and serving in inner city and “estate” communities
• People in urban congregations and communities looking for information and inspiration
• People in training for mission and ministry and the colleges who teach them
• Researchers, students and mission strategists wanting to find out and write about patterns and principles of urban mission
What is Urban Mission and Ministry?
Urban mission and ministry as we understand it covers Christian outreach in word and action in contexts which have at least one of the following characteristics:
1. A concentrated settlement with a large population - maybe 50,000+
2. A diverse population in terms of social class, ethnicity, religion
3. Concentrated high levels of poverty and deprivation.
In many situations, especially in the poorer areas of the largest cities, these three features will intersect. However, there are many other types of areas meeting only one or two of these criteria, which fall within the scope of our reflections. Each place will have distinctive local characteristics and it is important for urban mission practitioners to study the features of British cities and towns where they live and work, in all their variety.
Mission and ministry, in our view, includes evangelism and church growth or planting, discipleship, prayer and worship, theological reflection, social action projects, community development, and partnership activities for the common good alongside people and organisations of many faiths and none.
Therefore we have included material and organisations working from a wide range of theological perspectives from the conservative evangelical to the radical and Catholic. As a portal site to a huge range of urban mission material, it will never be complete, and we hope it will be constantly expanding.
We hope you will be able to find a spare half hour to have a first look at our site, and if you like what you see recommend it to colleagues and friends.
Please help us develop the UK Urban Mission Portal
As a portal site to a huge range of urban mission material, it will never be complete, and we hope it will be constantly expanding. If you know of important organisations, literature or other resources that we have missed please use the contact form to send details to us and we will endeavor to add them as soon as possible.
We want to build an interactive community around the site and encourage users to contact us using the web form or via the email address given. We will try to respond within 2 or 3 days. If appropriate we can arrange a zoom call with one of our team to discuss your query and offer some support. We may be able to put you in touch directly with other experienced urban practitioners.
There is the facility to set up discussion forums on general or specific topics, but this will need to reach a critical mass of membership to be effective.
We would also love to hear from you with comments and reactions to this site - feedback positive or negative will help us to improve it. We hope and trust our efforts will bring benefit to your ministry and contribute significantly to the work of the Kingdom of God in urban areas in the UK.
Greg Smith has worked for over forty years in urban mission, community development and social research in London and Preston. He has published extensively on religion in the inner city, faith involvement in urban regeneration, and urban theology. Until retirement in 2019, Greg worked for Together Lancashire, supporting faith based social action and urban churches. He continues to be active in the City of Sanctuary movement in Preston, in his local inner-city parish and in projects and networks addressing food poverty and financial inclusion. From 2011-2016 he also worked for the Evangelical Alliance managing the 21st Century Evangelicals’ research programme.