Leaving Egypt Podcast

In this episode, Al Roxburgh and Jenny Sinclair talk with John Clifton about his experiences as a Salvation Army leader among people in the margins. In a sense, this is what you would expect from a Salvation Army officer. But give this a careful listen: John is also a deeply informed thinker and theologian with vital insights for the church today. In Christian circles lately there is much being said and written about two contrasting conversations: the quiet revival of young adults coming to certain kinds of churches, and the confusion and fear surrounding the recent conversions of controversial figures like Tommy Robinson and others at the margins—people who have had little to do with church and Christian life. John has important things to say about what is happening here and about why we should listen to what the Spirit is saying from the culture to the churches. John calls the church to return to its working-class roots, for relational spaces where Christ is encountered in the powerless, for the fostering of solidarity, and for local economic renewal.Captain John Clifton is a Salvation Army officer, ordained minister, and theologian based in North Shields, North East England. He serves as the Divisional Commander for The Salvation Army’s North East Division, overseeing operations across the region, focusing on spiritual guidance, community outreach, and social services. His work emphasizes the Church’s engagement in public life and society, particularly supporting communities affected by debt, hunger, homelessness, and unemployment. He collaborates on initiatives for justice, reconciliation, and empowering local leadership through broad-based community organizing. Academically, John researches systematic theology, exploring the transformative power of compassionate acts and social encounters. His doctoral thesis was titled “Producing Christ in the World: a study of Christian action in terms of the Homeless Man as a Christological paradigm of powerlessness.” He writes on faith, theology, and faithful action via his Substack, Christ in the Margins, and has previously led Salvation Army corps in places like Ilford (East London) and Blackpool (North West England). The youngest son of General Shaw Clifton, John has made a lifelong commitment to the Salvation Army and lives in North Shields near Newcastle with his wife Naomi and their young family. His writing can be found on his Substack, With Christ in the MarginsFor John Clifton:https://www.instagram.com/drjohnclifton/https://x.com/DrJohnCliftonhttps://www.linkedin.com/in/drjohnclifton/?originalSubdomain=ukhttps://www.salvationarmy.org/news/shaped-conviction-crafted-care-and-offered-army-he-lovedFor 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 TimeFor Jenny Sinclair:Substack https://t4cg.substack.com/s/from-jenny-sinclairWebsite: https://togetherforthecommongood.co.uk/from-jenny-sinclairLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jenny-sinclair-0589783b/Twitter: https://x.com/T4CG Get full access to Leaving Egypt at leavingegyptpodcast.substack.com/subscribe

In a departure from previous episodes, Al Roxburgh interviews his Leaving Egypt co-host, Jenny Sinclair. Jenny shares something of her early life: from growing up in the milieu of a significant church leader, to years of rebellion, to the awakening that came through a dark night of the soul, and finally to finding her home in the Catholic Church. Later, sensing signs of coming social instability, she was drawn by the Holy Spirit to follow a trail. Through her curiosity to understand what Christian witness in the midst of this unravelling means for the churches, there emerged for Jenny a new vocation in the form of Together for the Common Good. Amidst the animating energy of the Spirit, Jenny finds herself at the heart of an unfolding work, with many others involved. Seeking a constructive response to the social crises of our time she encourages Christians to participate in the common good - the heart of God’s work of reweaving a broken world.Jenny Sinclair is Founder and Director of Together for the Common Good, a UK charity. From its beginnings in 2011, T4CG works with Christians across the churches to cultivate an “outward-facing” posture that listens to both God and neighbour. Engaging leaders, churches, charities and schools, T4CG draws on the Catholic Social Thought tradition as the key theological imagination for addressing the social, spiritual, moral, economic and political crises of this moment. Jenny speaks and writes, and convenes gatherings of leaders to engage the key questions of our time. Alongside this work, Jenny is the director and co-founder of Leaving Egypt with co-host Alan Roxburgh. Formerly a graphic designer, charity worker and serial volunteer, Jenny is the daughter of the Anglican Bishop David Sheppard. She is mother to two adult sons and currently lives in Liverpool.For Jenny Sinclair:https://t4cg.substack.com/s/from-jenny-sinclairhttps://togetherforthecommongood.co.uk/from-jenny-sinclairhttps://togetherforthecommongood.co.uk/about/our-founder-directorhttps://leavingegyptpodcast.substack.com/podcasthttps://www.linkedin.com/in/jenny-sinclair-0589783b/https://x.com/T4CGFor Alan J Roxburgh:http://alanroxburgh.com/abouthttps://www.facebook.com/alan.roxburgh.127/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 Time Get full access to Leaving Egypt at leavingegyptpodcast.substack.com/subscribe

Join the Leaving Egypt community on Substack: leavingegyptpodcast.substack.comIn this episode, Al Roxburgh and Jenny Sinclair talk with Tim Dickau about the ways he has lived out his work as a Christian leader in the city. Tim is one of those thoroughly urbanized people whose roots are in rural Alberta, Canada. Shaped by the rhythms of farming and the practice of hospitality, Tim’s unique blend of prairie populism shows up in his theology of place. Rather than starting with a plan or a project, he begins by asking, “What could grow here?” Deeply attentive to how God is already at work in people’s lives, he tills the ground in faith, trusting that something will emerge. His journey wasn’t straightforward. After leading a large church for many years, a season of burnout revealed for him a new way of being a leader. Sharing life across socio-economic divides reshaped his understanding of justice. This brought forth acts of resistance—addressing food insecurity and homelessness—and expressions of hope, such as repurposing church buildings for affordable housing. In the midst of all this, Tim is that detective of divinity, listening to what it is the Spirit wants to weave in the city, creating spaces where others can join with God in the restoration of the whole of life.Tim Dickau is the Director of City Gate Vancouver, a charity that works with churches and social organizations across the city addressing social problems like displacement of refugees, food insecurity, poverty, and in particular affordable housing and the use of church buildings. He’s also a trainer in the Certificate in Missional Leadership, a one-year congregational cohort based program, at St Andrew’s Hall, the Presbyterian Church college at the University of British Columbia. For more than twenty years, Tim was the pastor of Grandview Calvary Baptist Church in the downtown east side of Vancouver. He lives in community as part of an extended family. For Tim Dickauhttps://citygatevancouver.org/our-work/https://www.standrews.edu/cml/certificate-in-missional-leadership/https://williamtemplefoundation.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/The-Promise-of-New-Monasticism-in-a-Secular-Age-Tim-Dickau.pdfhttps://reimagineclc.ca/BooksForming Christian Communities in a Secular Age: Recovering Humility and Hope - A Guide to Success in Adult Faith Today Plunging into the Kingdom Way: Practicing the Shared Strokes of Community, Hospitality, Justice, and ConfessionAlso referred to in this episode:Patrick Condon Broken City: Land Speculation, Inequality, and Urban CrisisMark Elsdon Gone for Good?: Negotiating the Coming Wave of Church Property TransitionFor 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 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

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://togetherforthecommongood.co.uk/from-jenny-sinclairLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jenny-sinclair-0589783b/X.com/Twitter: https://x.com/homeFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/TogetherForTheCommonGoodUKInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/t4cg_insta/ Get full access to Leaving Egypt at leavingegyptpodcast.substack.com/subscribe

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