Leaving Egypt Podcast

We hope that you are enjoying Leaving Egypt. We would invite you to join the Leaving Egypt community on Substack by becoming a paid subscriber: https://leavingegyptpodcast.substack.com/subscribe
In this episode, Al Roxburgh and Jenny Sinclair speak with Sophie Taylor about the quiet but growing movement of young adults towards the Catholic Church. Drawn by a hunger for truth and belonging amidst a chaotic culture, many arrive with little formation - some new to faith, others reclaiming what earlier generations let slip. Sophie explores what attracts them: the Church’s sacramental imagination - beauty, liturgy, art, and mystery - and the way parish life can reframe reality and relationship. She also names the challenges of moving from online isolation and post-COVID social anxiety into embodied community, arguing that young adults need more than a friendly welcome: they need intentional formation in relational life. With realism and hope, Sophie describes how deep listening and attentive encounter can renew belonging in the Church and beyond. This is a compelling picture of God’s mission at work - one heart at a time - inviting the whole Church to become a living oasis amid the storms of our age.
Sophie Taylor is the Adult Faith Formation Officer at the Diocese of Leeds, where she supports new Catholics, resources catechists, and organises formation events and days of reflection to help adults across the diocese grow in faith. She also works part-time supporting the pastoral life and community at the parish of St. Joseph Brighouse and St. Patrick’s Elland. After gaining her degree in Theology at Leeds Trinity University, when she also served in the diocesan youth team, she taught RE in the North East of England, where she also served in her local parish.

For Sophie Taylor
https://www.dioceseofleeds.org.uk/education/welcome/meet-the-team/
https://www.dioceseofleeds.org.uk/new-eve-faith-formation-day-celebrating-womens-call-to-holiness/
https://www.dioceseofleeds.org.uk/new-catholics/
https://stjosephschurchbrighouse.co.uk/our-faith/our-news
For Alan J Roxburgh:
http://alanroxburgh.com/about
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/alan.roxburgh.127/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/thecommonsnetwork
Books:
Forming Communities of Hope in the Great Unravelling: Leadership in a Changing World (with Roy Searle)
Joining God in the Great Unravelling
Leadership, God’s Agency and Disruptions
Joining God, Remaking Church, Changing the World: The New Shape of the Church in Our Time
For Jenny Sinclair:
Substack: https://t4cg.substack.com/s/from-jenny-sinclair
Website: https://togetherforthecommongood.co.uk/from-jenny-sinclair
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jenny-sinclair-0589783b/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/T4CG
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TogetherForTheCommonGoodUK
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/t4cg_insta/


Get full access to Leaving Egypt at leavingegyptpodcast.substack.com/subscribe

We hope that you are enjoying Leaving Egypt. We would invite you to join the Leaving Egypt community on Substack by becoming a paid subscriber: https://leavingegyptpodcast.substack.com/subscribe

In this episode, Al Roxburgh and Jenny Sinclair meet Fr John Armitage. These days, there is much talk about the challenges for leadership and what it means to be church in a post-everything society. Anxious questions abound: Is revival coming, or are we sliding into an even more uncertain season? Yet when listening to Fr John, a completely different response emerges. Amid what he describes as the great emptiness of modern life - the worship of idols, the loss of community – here is a wise, seasoned leader who carries a quiet sense of joy, anticipation, and delight in the work God has given him right where he is. What’s the secret? First, he is deeply rooted in place. When asked about himself, he begins with the story of where he grew up. It’s as if he’s saying: if you want to know who I am, you need to know where I was planted. The relational character of working-class culture has shaped his life. Second, he is firmly rooted in the Catholic tradition; the ordered rhythms of the Church have formed him. There is no fancy strategy to what he does, no new thing that makes the parish successful. But there is this deep rooting in the Gospel. These realities give him the grounding to be present with people, to enter their everyday lives in a way that lets them know they’re being met by someone held by a bigger story. This is a man in love with his neighbourhood, his life in God, and therefore with the people around him—core elements, it seems, in being a kingdom people in Egypt.
Monsignor John Armitage is the longstanding parish priest at St Margaret’s Church in Canning Town, his lifelong East London home. Fr John is an inspirational retreat leader, speaker and mentor to clergy and has held senior roles in the Diocese of Brentwood, including Vicar General. For five years between 2014 and 2020, he was Rector of the National Basilica of Our Lady of Walsingham, overseeing its modernisation and leading the Rededication of England to the Dowry of Mary during the Covid lockdown. Deeply committed to social justice, he was instrumental in founding the UK’s first community organising alliance, the East London Communities Organisation (TELCO) in 1996, which launched the original Living Wage campaign in 2001. Since 2020, he has also taken on the leadership of the Guild of Our Lady of Ransom, the UK Catholic evangelisation charity which has birthed the WeBelieve Festival of Catholic Life.
For Monsignor John Armitage:
https://www.dioceseofbrentwood.net/clergy/rt-rev-mgr-john-armitage/
https://www.guild-ransom.co.uk/about
https://www.cbcew.org.uk/home/our-work/living-wage/videos/east-end-dockers/
Mentioned in this episode:
England: The Dowry of Our Lady of Mary
Article by Maurice Glasman
For Alan J Roxburgh:
http://alanroxburgh.com/about
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/alan.roxburgh.127/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/thecommonsnetwork
Books:
Forming Communities of Hope in the Great Unravelling: Leadership in a Changing World (with Roy Searle)
Joining God in the Great Unravelling
Leadership, God’s Agency and Disruptions
Joining God, Remaking Church, Changing the World: The New Shape of the Church in Our Time
For Jenny Sinclair:
Substack: https://t4cg.substack.com/s/from-jenny-sinclair
Website: https://togetherforthecommongood.co.uk/from-jenny-sinclair
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jenny-sinclair-0589783b/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/T4CG
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TogetherForTheCommonGoodUK
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/t4cg_insta/


Get full access to Leaving Egypt at leavingegyptpodcast.substack.com/subscribe

We hope that you are enjoying Leaving Egypt. We would invite you to join the Leaving Egypt community on Substack by becoming a paid subscriber: https://leavingegyptpodcast.substack.com/subscribe

In this episode, Al Roxburgh and Jenny Sinclair meet Melanie Rieback. Melanie’s faith journey is as unexpected as her professional journey. Her extraordinary story, from computer hacker to systems thinker, from a secular Jewish upbringing to the Catholic tradition, is filled with creativity and paradox. She incubates steward-ownership business models and loves the ancient liturgies of the Church. She is a leader in cutting-edge redemptive business and finance who reads Thomas Aquinas. She works with European governments as her life is shaped by Edith Stein. She retells parables to ground new economic ideas in ancient biblical wisdom. She builds bridges between the political left and the Christian right. Melanie is involved in an amazing journey of encountering the reality of God. The story of her conversion was told in another podcast (linked below). In this episode of Leaving Egypt, she reveals how her journey continues to unfold, including baptism into the Catholic Church. What stands out most about Melanie’s vocation is that, even in a highly technical field, her primary question is: “Lord Jesus, where do you want me?” Her surrender, through moments of crisis and awakening, is to a powerful calling: to gather and empower people to create a more just world, for the sake of the other, in God’s name.
Dr. Melanie Rieback is a computer scientist and social entrepreneur, CEO and founder of a cybersecurity company - Radically Open Security - that gives all its profit to charity. She is also founder of a “Post Growth” startup incubator, Nonprofit Ventures. Inspired by Catholic Social Teaching, she is involved in the Francesco Collaborative where she mentors young entrepreneurs and practitioners the non-extractive business space. Formerly, Melanie was Assistant Professor of Computer Science at the Free University of Amsterdam, Senior Engineering Manager on XenClient at Citrix and head researcher in the CSIRT at ING Bank, where she spearheaded their Analysis Lab and the ING Core Threat Intelligence Project. Melanie has received many awards for her work as a woman in tech innovation. She was born in Cleveland, Ohio, raised in Florida and lives in Amsterdam.
For Melanie Rieback:
www.linkedin.com/in/mrieback
www.radicallyopensecurity.com
www.francescocollaborative.org
www.francescoeconomy.org
Rerum Novarum – Pope Leo XIII
Laborem Exercens – John Paul II
A podcast interview with Melanie Rieback referred to in this episode
An article by Melanie Rieback on steward ownership as a third way (in Dutch): https://wi.christenunie.nl/groen-2025/03-creatief-met-armoede (pdf download)
Presentation on Steward Ownership by Melanie Rieback to the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences as part of a workshop on Digital Rerum Novarum: Artificial Intelligence for Peace, Social Justice, and Integral Human Development in October 2025
A series of lectures by Melanie Rieback on Post Growth Entrepreneurship at the University of Amsterdam

For Alan J Roxburgh:
http://alanroxburgh.com/about
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/alan.roxburgh.127/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/thecommonsnetwork
Books:
Forming Communities of Hope in the Great Unravelling: Leadership in a Changing World (with Roy Searle)
Joining God in the Great Unravelling
Leadership, God’s Agency and Disruptions
Joining God, Remaking Church, Changing the World: The New Shape of the Church in Our Time
For Jenny Sinclair:
Substack: https://t4cg.substack.com/s/from-jenny-sinclair
Website: https://togetherforthecommongood.co.uk/from-jenny-sinclair
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jenny-sinclair-0589783b/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/T4CG
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TogetherForTheCommonGoodUK
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/t4cg_insta/


Get full access to Leaving Egypt at leavingegyptpodcast.substack.com/subscribe

We hope that you are enjoying Leaving Egypt. We would invite you to join the Leaving Egypt community on Substack by becoming a paid subscriber: https://leavingegyptpodcast.substack.com/subscribe

In this episode, Al Roxburgh and Jenny Sinclair meet for a second time with Mark Lau Branson about how his church is working out the nature of leadership.
A small, multicultural congregation in Los Angeles, they comprise a cross section of America - from university professors to immigrant day workers. Following the catastrophic urban wildfires of 2025 and amidst ongoing immigration issues that confront them daily, this community is undergoing a profound reorientation. Embracing a new imagination, they are allowing the gifts that the Spirit has given them through one another to shape them as a people. Shifting from an inward focus on the life of the church, towards the outward-facing question of how to join with God in their broken and shattered communities, they are seeing a more “bottom-up”, shared leadership emerging, and from this, meaningful relationships of solidarity in the neighbourhood. In the context of Luigino Bruni’s episode #60 it is clear that what is happening here is the discerning of “charism” among the people. Mark’s story describes a form of leadership quite different from the usual approaches of those with oversight of a congregation. Rather than “vision casting” and “strategizing” from above, this empowering, shared approach is about listening, prayer, and discernment, calling forth, naming and supporting the gifts of the people in liturgy, formation and worship - and especially outside church in their communities.  
Mark Lau Branson has been the Homer L. Goddard Senior Professor of the Ministry of the Laity and has taught at Fuller since 2000. His current work focuses on Ph.D. students. Ordained at San Francisco Christian Center, an African American Pentecostal church, he has served on the pastoral teams in United Methodist and Presbyterian churches and has written many books. Mark has worked with several agencies active in education, community development, and community organizing, and continues to serve as a consultant and speaker. He is a member of the national Advisory Board of the nonprofit CHERP Solar Power, and has served on the boards of the Institute of Urban Initiatives, the Ekklesia Project, and the Academy of Religious Leadership. He is active at La Fuente Ministries, a bi-lingual, multicultural church in Pasadena, California, USA.

For Mark Lau Branson: 
https://www.fuller.edu/faculty/mark-lau-branson/
Churches, Cultures, and Leadership: A Practical Theology of Congregations and Ethnicities (with Juan Martínez)
Leadership, God’s Agency and Disruptions: Confronting Modernity’s Wager (with Alan Roxburgh) 
Memories, Hopes, and Conversations: Appreciative Inquiry, Missional Engagement, and Congregational Change
Starting Missional Churches

For Alan J Roxburgh:
http://alanroxburgh.com/about
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/alan.roxburgh.127/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/thecommonsnetwork
Books
Forming Communities of Hope in the Great Unravelling: Leadership in a Changing World (with Roy Searle)
Joining God in the Great Unravelling
Leadership, God’s Agency and Disruptions
Joining God, Remaking Church, Changing the World: The New Shape of the Church in Our Time

For Jenny Sinclair:
Substack: https://t4cg.substack.com/s/from-jenny-sinclair
Website: https://togetherforthecommongood.co.uk/from-jenny-sinclair
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jenny-sinclair-0589783b/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/T4CG
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TogetherForTheCommonGoodUK
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/t4cg_insta/


Get full access to Leaving Egypt at leavingegyptpodcast.substack.com/subscribe

In this episode Al Roxburgh and Jenny Sinclair meet with Rob Stewart, a true pilgrim grounded in the hope of God’s kingdom. Rob recognises that modern economies are not only unjust but also deeply harmful, isolating people and working against the grain of humanity. Rob is convinced that another way is possible. Believing that human beings are “hard-wired for connection,” a moment of metanoia led him to leave behind a thirty-year business career and embark on a journey into relational economics. He went on to establish a solar energy cooperative which not only provides clean, affordable energy but also invites people into a shared story of participation. Rob’s pilgrimage has been shaped by highs and lows, inspired by contemplative prayer, and guided by a humble surrender to the will of God.
Rob Stewart is the Founder and Executive Director of Collective Power Boroondara, in Melbourne, Australia - a community energy cooperative advancing an equitable transition to a sustainable economy. Linked with others in the field of relational economics, he participates in the Francesco Collaborative and other international networks focused on ethical business practices. Formerly, he studied for the priesthood but things took an unexpected turn when he met his future wife. He went on to serve in the family retail business, a company founded by his father on the basis of Catholic Social Teaching principles. He lives in Melbourne with his wife and three adult sons.
Links
For Rob Stewart
https://collectivepowerboroondara.org/
https://www.linkedin.com/in/rob-stewart-a0b2551ab/
https://francescocollaborative.org/
Also mentioned in the episode:
A Personalist Manifesto by Emmanuel Mounier
https://www.cpa.coop/
For Alan J Roxburgh:
http://alanroxburgh.com/about
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/alan.roxburgh.127/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/thecommonsnetwork
Books
Forming Communities of Hope in the Great Unravelling: Leadership in a Changing World (with Roy Searle)
Joining God in the Great Unravelling
Leadership, God’s Agency and Disruptions
Joining God, Remaking Church, Changing the World: The New Shape of the Church in Our Time
For Jenny Sinclair:
Substack: https://t4cg.substack.com/s/from-jenny-sinclair
Website: https://togetherforthecommongood.co.uk/from-jenny-sinclair
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jenny-sinclair-0589783b/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/T4CG
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TogetherForTheCommonGoodUK
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/t4cg_insta/


Get full access to Leaving Egypt at leavingegyptpodcast.substack.com/subscribe