How to build a better world
It seems shots are being fired in the next general election. All political parties are trying out new policies and ideas in order to win your vote next year. But is this how we should build a better world? How does our culture do it? How should Christians do it?
MTV New series for Autumn 2023
Suffering: What to do about disasters
This week the news has been filled with human suffering on a mass scale; the death toll from floods in Derna stands at nearly 4000 and Morocco’s earthquake has so far claimed 3000 lives. How can we understand who God is and what He is like in a world where things go wrong?
Suffering is topical but it is a personal issue too because it can be a barrier to understanding who God is. What can we make of disasters like those in Libya and Morocco and how do we reconcile this with God.
Read MoreJames and Wayne talk about a recent cricket controversy and why this is really about our hearts and not just what happened on a cricket pitch.
Read MoreWhat do the England Cricket Board and Russian politics have in common? This week James and Wayne discuss systems and what makes them choose impunity or scapegoating and how Christians can respond to the wrongs of the systems we find ourselves in.
James has visited Sudan and describes it as a country that has had a deep impact on him. He was shocked to learn from Sudanese friends in the UK that Darfur is back in the news, as reminders of what some called the 21st century’s first genocide circulate.
More Tea, Vicar? this week considers a Christian perspective on the concept of impunity, defined as “exemption from punishment or freedom from the injurious consequences of an action” as the Janjaweed step up their campaign of terror against vulnerable and displaced peoples.
Outside of Jesus we are always creating division, we are always building walls; Hadrian’s Wall, the Berlin Wall, the Great Wall of China. The reason why dividing walls appear is because we don’t feel safe in other people’s presence. But with Jesus, it is safe to have no dividing wall. With impunity, we hide what makes us unsafe - Jesus wants us to bring it into the light so we can live alongside each other for our greater calling.
Read MoreWhen ITV announced on May 20, that Phillip Schofield would be leaving flagship daytime show, This Morning, after more than 20 years, it lifted the lid on a supposedly “toxic” culture and sparked the spectacle of a chain of celebrities “cancelling” the former presenter and the story exploding daily with revelations.
Read MoreWayne and James talk about music, creativity and artificial intelligence. Musician Sting, animal rights philosopher Peter Stringer and the bible have different things to say about humanity’s place in the world. In Genesis, God creates man in his own image and humanity is made last; what does this tell us about God’s purpose for humanity? Is there something distinct about humans as compared to the rest of the created order? We discuss how a common grace and truth that resides in all of us, Christians and non-Christians, speaks to who God is.
Read MoreThis week we felt it was the right thing to share our vision for our new building at 279 Gloucester Road with you, and talk about where we are headed as a church family. With our new building, we now have 24,000 square feet of faith ! We plan to share it with our community, with the Gloucester Road and with our whole city, Bristol. The next era of B&A is one church, one parish, one building….and we feel God's purpose for us is to fill this building with faith.
We want to see our building becoming fully alive in the week and people welcomed inside straight from the street.
We want faith to rise up and grow - ultimately we want the whole city to be filled with faith - and our building is the first step on this journey.
Read MoreThis week our discussion is around the news that Canon Mike Pilavachi, founder of Christian youth festival Soul Survivor, has stepped down from his role as Associate Pastor of Soul Survivor Church, St.Albans, as safe-guarding concerns against him are investigated. We look at individuals, at systems, at King David's Old Testament transgressions and how God would like us to respond and how we as a church family can learn to build greater health into our organisations to help prevent future leaders from failing.
Read MoreThis week we are definitely not talking about ducks in the font, currently causing a storm on Anglican Twitter. What we are talking about is why we do this podcast; how through More Tea, Vicar, we hope to bring a Christian understanding to contemporary issues in culture, and apply this to life as we are living it.
Read MoreWe've recorded an MTV special all about our upcoming move! This week we take our discussion right into the heart of the Bristol communities where we live and work. As a church we're about to move buildings and we wanted to share the extraordinary story of how we came to our new home through God's grace.
Read MoreThis week we discussed Matt Hancock’s leaked WhatsApp messages and why in culture and in life this happens again and again - our pasts always seem to catch up with us. We asked the question how does post-Christian culture handle the past and how do we, as followers of Jesus, see it differently?
Read MoreFollowing the Bishops' announcement this week proposing that the Church of England offer prayers of blessing to same-sex couples, a proposal that will be debated at General Synod next month, James and Wayne discuss some of the issues behind the issue: how can we have an established church in post-Christian culture? And what happens when a faith-group that is increasingly marginalised still has a significant role in public life?
This is the first in a short series we'll be recording about sexuality and same-sex marriage.
Read MoreWe're in the middle of a series seeking to understand the issues and controversy surrounding human sexuality and same-sex marriage going on in Church and culture at the moment.
Read MoreWe're in the middle of a series seeking to understand the issues and controversy surrounding human sexuality and same-sex marriage going on in Church and culture at the moment.
Read MoreThis week we read an article in the Guardian arguing that those who are pro same-sex marriage think that God's love and grace is for everyone and that those who are against same-sex marriage believe that God's love is restricted. We wanted to unpick this idea and explore what living in God's love and grace looks like.
Read MoreThis week we’re talking about Identity. One of the questions that often comes up when we talk about sexuality is that if your identity is that you’re same-sex attracted, are you inherently sinful in a way that someone who is heterosexual isn’t? We discuss the turn inward since the enlightenment, the history of desire, what sin actually is and where we find our true identity.
Read MoreThis week we’re talking about inclusion and welcome, two words that come up again and again in debates and discussion around the church and human sexuality. Both are expected of the church by culture and society but can we actually offer both and do they mean the same thing?
Read MoreIn the final part of our series on human sexuality we look at the story of the woman at the well in John’s gospel and ask the questions do we need sexual intimacy for a full life? And what is the life that Jesus offers and is He enough?
Read MoreHappy new year and welcome back to More Tea Vicar! In our first episode of 2023 we discuss the the recently aired interviews with Prince Harry, his desire to call out the injustice of the behaviour of the British press and how we can be people who prophetically speak out against injustice without it becoming personal.
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