Leaving Egypt Podcast

• EP#52 Listening with God in the Forgotten Places - with Sarah Small

  Join the Leaving Egypt community on Substack: leavingegyptpodcast.substack.comIn this episode, Al Roxburgh and Jenny Sinclair talk with Sarah Small about living incarnationally in some of the UK’s most forgotten communities. It can take a church leader many years to discover what it means to “be with”, to love the other as a person, just for who they are, rather than as a “project” or as an object of training. “Incarnational ministry” can sound clinical and strategic, yet reflects a deep truth. Sarah, who is not ordained, has a naturally internalized desire to give her life to the people of her community. Sarah’s wisdom is beautiful in its humility; she and her family have been living it out for real in South Manchester. Bringing honesty with little romanticism, she acknowledges the hard edges of this calling, but also the deep joy in the ways God is present. Sarah’s community, like others in the Eden Network, are confronting the economic realities of their neighbours, and in the midst of poverty are discovering how to be the healers of walls and lovers of the broken. In this conversation, we begin to appreciate how Christ is working through the prayers and presence of ordinary Christian families seeking the shalom of the places to which God has sent them.Sarah Small co-leads the Eden Network with her husband Steve. Eden is a movement of urban missionaries who live in some of the UK’s most deprived communities. She and Steve live with their three boys on a council estate (housing project) in South Manchester which has been home for 13 years. Eden is one part of the wider mission activity of The Message Trust, a global Christian charity sharing the good news of Jesus with the hardest-to-reach people and communities. Sarah read Religions and Theology at the University of Manchester. She also holds Masters degrees in International Politics and Theology.For Sarah Small: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sarah-small-73276340/?originalSubdomain=uk https://joineden.org/ https://www.message.org.uk/For Alan J Roxburgh: http://alanroxburgh.com/about Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/alan.roxburgh.127/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/thecommonsnetworkBooks Forming Communities of Hope in the Great Unraveling: Leadership in a Changing World (with Roy Searle)Practices for the Refounding of God’s People: The Missional Challenge of the West (with Martin Robinson) Joining God in the Great Unraveling Leadership, God’s Agency and Disruptions Joining God, Remaking Church, Changing the World: The New Shape of the Church in Our TimeFor Jenny Sinclair: Website: https://togetherforthecomm Get full access to Leaving Egypt at leavingegyptpodcast.substack.com/subscribe

  --------  

  1:08:05

  --------

  1:08:05
• EP#51 - Reimagining the Purposes of God - with Alan Roxburgh

  In a change-up from previous episodes, Jenny Sinclair interviews her Leaving Egypt co-host Al Roxburgh. Al shares about his journey, first, as a Baptist minister who knew how to renew and grow churches and, later, as a consultant on making churches “missional”. He talks about the significance of Lesslie Newbigin in launching a change in his thinking thirty years ago, a prompt that set him on a journey of reframing his understanding of God’s agency in the context of modernity. Changes in Al’s thinking and practice have continued over the last ten years—with an emerging clarity that we are living through a change of era. Amid signs of unravelling across the West, he has been drawn to engage with conversation partners around the relationship between church and society. This led him to revisit Catholic thinkers who examine political economy through the lens of the gospel, especially as the impact of economic systems on human flourishing became increasingly serious. Al describes how the Spirit has pushed him outward—away from a church-centric posture and toward a deeper awareness of God at work in the world, particularly in the local. His advice now for church leaders is not to focus on what makes the church work, but on what is going on among people in the places where they live. Through practices of discerning, dwelling, and listening, he urges us all to ask: What does it mean to be God’s people here, in this neighbourhood?For Alan J Roxburgh:http://alanroxburgh.com/aboutFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/alan.roxburgh.127/Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/thecommonsnetworkBooksForming Communities of Hope in the Great Unraveling: Leadership in a Changing World (with Roy Searle)Practices for the Refounding of God’s People: The Missional Challenge of the West (with Martin Robinson)Joining God in the Great UnravelingLeadership, God’s Agency and DisruptionsJoining God, Remaking Church, Changing the World: The New Shape of the Church in Our TimeAlso mentioned in this episode:Paul Weston Humble Confidence: Lesslie Newbigin and the Logic of MissionTim Rogan The Moral Economists: R. H. Tawney, Karl Polanyi, E. P. Thompson, and the Critique of CapitalismAlan Seligman Modernity’s Wager: Authority, the Self, and TranscendenceAlso referred to were these Catholic thinkers: Augusto Del Noce The Crisis of ModernityLuigino Bruni Civil EconomyWilliam T Cavanaugh Field Hospital and The Uses of IdolatoryRocco Buttiglioni Modernity’s AlternativeFor Jenny Sinclair:Website: https://togetherforthecommongood.co.uk/from-jenny-sinclairLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jenny-sinclair-0589783b/Twitter: https://twitter.com/T4CGFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/TogetherForTheCommonGoodUKInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/t4cg_insta/ Get full access to Leaving Egypt at leavingegyptpodcast.substack.com/subscribe

  --------  

  1:12:41

  --------

  1:12:41
• ​​ ​EP#50 - Deeply Local, Rooted in Listening with Bishop Philip North

  In this episode, Al Roxburgh and Jenny Sinclair talk with Bishop Philip North about cultivating communities of God’s people in Blackburn in the North West of England. We encounter a leader responsible for shaping the life of the institutional church with a remarkable incarnational imagination. Bishop Philip’s journey has taught him the fundamental importance of listening to poor and working class communities and the imperative of going deeply local. He knows that this is how Christian life is lived vividly as a sign of love and justice on the ground. His passion for people and place is striking, as is his clear sense of calling to servant leadership. His simple desire is to form a people who are deeply invested in their local communities and liberated through being in love with Jesus. Rather than leading with strategies from the top, he understands that power must be shared and delights in empowering unlikely local people to lead. This is an encouraging witness to the ways in which the church can shine forth the wonder of Christ.Philip North is the Bishop of Blackburn in the Anglican Diocese which serves most of the county of Lancashire in the UK. He began ministry in the Diocese of Durham, serving outer estates Parishes in Sunderland and Hartlepool, and then spent six years ministering to pilgrims to the Shrine of Our Lady of Walsingham as Priest Administrator. He returned to parochial ministry as Team Rector of the Parish of Old St Pancras, serving a large area of North-west London around Camden Town. He was consecrated Bishop of Burnley in February 2015 and translated to the See of Blackburn in 2023. He has a strong interest in issues around poverty and social justice and in the vitality of the urban church. He is a member of the Company of Mission Priests, a dispersed community who live to a rule in order to focus their lives on the mission of the church, especially amongst the poor.LinksFor Bishop Philip:https://www.blackburn.anglican.org/bishop-philiphttps://togetherforthecommongood.co.uk/uncategorised/no-repentance-no-renewalhttps://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/b04cffq1For Alan J Roxburgh:http://alanroxburgh.com/aboutFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/alan.roxburgh.127/Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/thecommonsnetworkBooksForming Communities of Hope in the Great Unraveling: Leadership in a Changing World (with Roy Searle)Joining God in the Great UnravelingLeadership, God’s Agency and DisruptionsJoining God, Remaking Church, Changing the World: The New Shape of the Church in Our TimeFor Jenny Sinclair:Website: https://togetherforthecommongood.co.uk/from-jenny-sinclairLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jenny-sinclair-0589783b/Twitter: https://twitter.com/T4CGFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/TogetherForTheCommonGoodUKInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/t4cg_insta/ Get full access to Leaving Egypt at leavingegyptpodcast.substack.com/subscribe

  --------  

  1:02:17

  --------

  1:02:17
• EP#49 Local, Sacramental, Relational with Jide Ehizele

  In this episode Al Roxburgh and Jenny Sinclair talk with Jide Ehizele, a South London writer and thinker reflecting on the cultural and spiritual landscape of modern Britain. Formed by a lifelong encounter with Jesus, Jide is compelled to articulate a new moral imagination grounded in local community. A child of Nigerian immigrants whose lives were shaped in the deeply sacramental ways of African spirituality, Jide was given through them the gift of asking questions many of us would never imagine. He needed to understand, for example, how British institutional Christianity could “fit” into the spirituality within which his parents had been formed. In that kind of questioning it became clear to him that the relational aspect of life with God and with others was fundamental. This emphasis on relationality not only reflects the theology woven through his writing but also drives his work with children and young adults who are searching for purpose in a disintegrating society. His approach is undergirded by a spirit of self-sacrifice, bringing people together in mutual accountability to discover something bigger than themselves, revealing the nature of God and the spirituality of the sacred.Jide Ehizele is a Christian thinker and writer focusing on faith, identity and cultural renewal. In his Substack, Southeast London Psalms, Jide wrestles with faith, politics and community from the perspective of a Black British Christian living in modern Britain. Jide is an active member of St Peter's Church, Brockley, leading theology workshops and volunteering with children’s ministry. The son of Nigerian parents, Jide was born and bred in Lewisham, Southeast London, and his day job is as a specialist consultant in the economics and planning of railway operations.LinksFor Jide Ehizele:https://x.com/OBEhizelehttps://www.linkedin.com/in/jide-ehizele-ab28785b/https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/2025/07/the-new-racism-of-the-british-righthttps://substack.com/home/post/p-168224782For Alan J Roxburgh:http://alanroxburgh.com/aboutFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/alan.roxburgh.127/Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/thecommonsnetworkBooksForming Communities of Hope in the Great Unraveling: Leadership in a Changing World(with Roy Searle)Joining God in the Great UnravelingLeadership, God’s Agency and DisruptionsJoining God, Remaking Church, Changing the World: The New Shape of the Church in Our TimeFor Jenny Sinclair:Website: https://togetherforthecommongood.co.uk/from-jenny-sinclairLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jenny-sinclair-0589783b/Twitter: https://twitter.com/T4CGFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/TogetherForTheCommonGoodUKInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/t4cg_insta/ Get full access to Leaving Egypt at leavingegyptpodcast.substack.com/subscribe

  --------  

  1:10:44

  --------

  1:10:44
• EP#48 - Made to be With and For Each Other with Luke Bretherton

  ​​In this episode, Al Roxburgh and Jenny Sinclair talk with Luke Bretherton about the vocation of the church within the grounded, everyday realities of the local. Luke brings a rare breadth of learning to dilemmas so many are wrestling with, from the shaping of congregational life to how our common life became so atrophied and objectified in contemporary culture. Framing these big questions in ways that land in the ordinary, Luke explores memory, inheritance and place, and, unpacking the ancient democratic practices of the commons, he shows how these very commons became enclosed. Digging down into the impact of these trends, not only the loss of local power but also the crisis of institutional imagination in many churches, we explore what kinds of leadership and structures are needed to recover agency and to reimagine mission. This is a hope-filled engagement with how the Holy Spirit is calling God’s people on the ground into a story of civic and spiritual renewal. Along the way, we discover that “love fully realised” is not about providing services, nor about freedom of choice, but looks and tastes like communion.Luke Bretherton is Regius Professor of Moral and Pastoral Theology at Christ Church, Oxford, where he also directs the McDonald Centre for Theology, Ethics, and Public Life. Luke is also a Canon of Christ Church Cathedral and has duties as a Church of England priest. Until 2024 he was the Robert E. Cushman Distinguished Professor of Moral and Political Theology at Duke University in America. He has also been Visiting Professor at St Mellitus Theological College, London. Alongside his work as a theologian, Luke has long been involved in community organising and practical collaborations with churches, charities and mission agencies. He has written many books, most recently A Primer in Christian Ethics and Christ and the Common Life, and he hosts the podcast Listen! Organize! Act!LinksFor Luke Bretherton:https://www.theology.ox.ac.uk/people/rev-canon-professor-luke-brethertonhttps://x.com/WestLondonManPodcast: Listen, Organize, Act! Organizing & Democratic PoliticsBooks:A Primer in Christian Ethics: Christ and the Struggle to Live WellChristianity and Contemporary Politics: The Conditions and Possibilities of Faithful WitnessChrist and the Common Life: Political Theology and the Case for DemocracyHospitality as Holiness: Christian Witness Amid Moral DiversityFor Alan J Roxburgh:http://alanroxburgh.com/aboutFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/alan.roxburgh.127/Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/thecommonsnetworkBooksForming Communities of Hope in the Great Unraveling: Leadership in a Changing World (with Roy Searle)Joining God in the Great UnravelingLeadership, God’s Agency and DisruptionsJoining God, Remaking Church, Changing the World: The New Shape of the Church in Our TimeFor Jenny Sinclair:Website: https://togetherforthecommongood.co.uk/from-jenny-sinclairLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jenny-sinclair-0589783b/Twitter: https://twitter.com/T4CGFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/TogetherForTheCommonGoodUKInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/t4cg_insta/ Get full access to Leaving Egypt at leavingegyptpodcast.substack.com/subscribe

  --------  

  1:25:01

  --------

  1:25:01

Más podcasts de Religión y espiritualidad

Podcasts a la moda de Religión y espiritualidad

Acerca de Leaving Egypt Podcast