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Can't wait for the September edition of Reform magazine? Don't worry, you won't have to wait much longer. In the meantime, read an extract of a great interview by two members of the Reform team – Charissa King and Stephen Tomkins.
Ben Lindsay is on a mission to get churches talking about race.
He describes himself as a black pastor of a white-majority church in one of the most racially diverse boroughs in London, Emmanuel Church in New Cross.
The Wessex Synod of the United Reformed Church (URC) has joined a growing number of organisations in divesting shares from fossil fuel energy companies.
The move, announced on 27 July, is in line with policy approved at the URC’s May meeting of Mission Council where the Church unanimously approved a proposal to divest from fossil fuel companies.
Simon Loveitt, the United Reformed Church Related Community Worker (CRCW) for the Manor Church and Community Project in Sheffield, celebrated 30 years of service last month.
Simon reflects on the past three decades serving communities:
I was commissioned on 18 July 1989 and my first post was at Hulme URC in Manchester. I have also worked in Middlesbrough and Bradford. Thirty years later, I work in Sheffield with the Manor Church and Community Project, an ecumenical initiative comprising Anglican, Methodist and URC partners.
Church representatives from across Europe have expressed disappointment at the failure of EU ministers in agreeing any arrangement for search and rescue in the Mediterranean.
At the EU interior ministers’ meeting in Helsinki on 18 July, further discussions and proposals for a temporary arrangement were also postponed until September.
Dr Torsten Moritz, General Secretary of the Churches’ Commission for Migrants in Europe (CCME) – of which the United Reformed Church is a member – expressed dismay at the results.
It’s been three years since the United Reformed Church (URC) became the largest UK denomination to allow its churches to decide whether they want to register to perform marriages of same-sex couples.
Cumnor URC, in Oxford, was one of the first congregations to register. The Revd Nigel Appleton, who at the time was its associate Minister, reflects on the church’s journey.
Like many other congregations in the URC, Cumnor URC’s initial discussions around the place of LGBT+ people were tentative.
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