This Moot podcast includes a homily and then space to respond with a time of music. In this podcast Michael Radcliffe explores the theme of following Jesus in the complexity of our contemporary world. Drawing on the lectionary readings of Ephesians 1.3-14 and Mark 6.14-29, Mike explores how our baggage becomes a barrier to experiencing God and in particular Jesus which requires us to reach beyond are self-obsessions and self-preoccupations. Michael L Radcliffe is one of the founding participants of the Moot Community, an artist who also works as a plumber. To see some of Michael’s art please see artbizness.com
This podcast was recorded in the Eucharist Service on the 15th July 2012 at the home of the Moot Community at the Guild Church of St Mary Aldermary. Music was performed by Peter Thomas and Ciara Lowther.
In this final of three podcasts recorded in August 2011 Ian Mobsby conversed with Simon Walker - author, teacher, mentor and Anglican Priest to explore the issue of the 'undefended life'. Simon has written a number of highly acclaimed books on the subject, getting to the heart of the calling of Christian spirituality to promote an approach to life which is undefended. In this podcast Simon explores how getting beyond fear and the troubles of our world is possible by a deep relationship of love with God in the world, that means we are able to work collaboratively with others, and trust God to be doing things beyond our understanding and control.
For more information on Simon's work see: http://www.undefended.org.uk/
In this first of three podcasts recorded in August 2011 Ian Mobsby conversed with Simon Walker - author, teacher, mentor and Anglican Priest to explore the issue of the 'undefended life'. Simon has written a number of highly acclaimed books on the sbject, getting to the heart of the calling of Christian spirituality to promote an apporach to life which is undefended. In this podcast Simon maps out the effects of early childhood on our personality types, and an interpretation of the New Testament that promotes liberation through experiencing the love of God to overcome fear and so be undefended.
For more information on Simon's work see here.
For information on Simon's books click here:
In this podcast interview, Brian McLaren dialogues with Ian Mobsby exploring the future of church and mission in the US and UK. Brian is an international author, speaker and pastor associated with emergent and emerging church in the USA and around the world. Brian addressed the International Anglican Lambeth Conference in 2008. In this podcast, a wide range of issues are discussed including new monasticism, mission to spiritual seekers, and the challenge of church in the twenty first century.
In this weeks podcast, Ian Mobsby explores the theme of Christ's Resurrection alongside the calling for hope and risk-taking to replace fear. Shalom, the Jewish theologial understanding of God's outworking of love in and to the world, becomes the Kingdom of God, and the disciples are challenged to live out this love in the Kingdom, through the peace of God's Shalom in openness to the world. This is our challenge as emerging and fresh expressions of church, to catch up with what God is already doing.
On the 4th Sunday of Lent 2010, Ian Mobsby explores the theme of passions and virtues, and the need for inner freedom. Reflecting on the parable of the Prodigal Son and the story of Jesus going into the desert for 40 days, Ian explores the call for people to face their innerselves, their thinking and their sense of inner health. Moot is beginning its exploration as a New Monastic Community, to explore the need for some explicit spiritual practices, virtues and postures to assist people to go deeper with the Community's Rhythm of Life.
If you neglect your inner self, then in extreme circumstances you will be held captive by your inner compulsions and addictions, which will feel like you are being controlled by an outer force preventing your autonomy. It will literally feel like you are being controlled by a demon. It is important that we face our need for inner freedom as well as outward liberation.
On February 3rd, Martin Newell who is a member of the Catholic Worker movement in the UK, and Trident Ploughshares, came to discuss the essence of community and his own personal story with the Moot Community. The choices Martin has made and his insights from his faith are rich and challenging. The catholic worker movement offers great wisdom concerning 'being counter cultural' to a world obsessed with the free market and competition. A disposition that always oppresses the poor and the vulnerable. This podcast includes the discussions between the moot community and Martin.
This is the second podcast from Martin, scroll down below to listen to the conversation between Martin and Ian Mobsby
At the Alt Eucharist Service of the Moot Community on the 14th February 2010, Clare Catford explores the whole issue of seeking God in the details of life. This importantly includes the difficulties of living, in our journeys of human becoming. We do not need to feel ashamed or hidden. We are all broken, and it is helpful to live out the struggles of our lives in community, where others can encourage us to be whole both emotionally and physically. Hiding your struggles and shame can become toxic, that prevent wellbeing and a healthy spirituality. God loves us, even in our brokenness.
Apologies for the slight interference in this recording. We have worked out why, and it won't happen in future recordings.
In the second of two events, Dave Tomlinson leads a Moot Wednesday evening gathering to discuss his new book Re-enchanting Christianity. Dave explored the idea of a 'second innocence' developed by a number theologians, to explore the reconstruction of a faith that can engage with the reality of the twenty first century. For more information on Dave's book, click here. Dave has been a major support to the Moot Community. We hope to develop greater links between St Lukes Church Holloway and the Moot Community.
People are no less spiritual today than they were in the past, but they are a lot less religious - at least, in a formal sense. A disconnect has ocurred between religion and spirituality: people no longer see religion or Church as the natural setting in which to explore or express their spiritual aspirations. So they are drifting away from churches in droves. However, they are not doing so because they no longer believe in God, or because they have no hunger or interest in the spiritual aspect of life, but because, in their experience of Church, they are neither finding a faith they can believe in, not an existential spirituality that can sustain their souls in an age of anxiety and estrangement.
In a previous podcast, Jonny Spoor of the Moot Community talked to Ian Mobsby about his experience of participating and living in the L'arche community in France. He went there for his summer holiday from studying. Here he lived in a house with Jean Vanier and loved and served in L'arche, possibly one of the most important new monastic inspired communities in the world. Jonny recently went back to interview Jean Vanier about his experiences, theology and thinking to write an article for the Student Christian Movement magazine, and whilst he was there, he recorded some of the wisdom of the conversation. So this podcast is more unusual than the ones we usually do, in that it pulls together Jean Vanier's thinking where you can't hear the questions Jonny has asked. It however, allows the listener to engage with the remarkable wisdom of this important visionary and activist. For those in the emerging church, fresh expressions and new monasticism, there is much here to aid us in our quest to build ecclesial communities out of contextual mission.
In this podcast, Ian Mobsby explores the implications of Ecclesiastes 3:1-15 and John 14: 15-21. As Moot is part of the emerging and fresh expressions of church movements, it is founded on the vision of building ecclesial communities out of contextual mission. It is within this vision of being a follower of Christ and seeking to be part of a radical community, that we need to consider the issues of personal identity and issues of taboo. In the Ecclesiastes text, we are challenged by the need of an identity centred on God, where our lives are often hard and relatively short. The second text again returns to the idea of building ecclesial communities out of contextual mission, where the mission in question was to a hated people, the Samaritans, and a hated woman who was possibly a prostitute. Jesus in this text breaks many religious and social taboos by even talking to the woman at the well and to the local people. So this text allows us to see on the one hand the importance of a faith and our identity to be in God in an I-God relationship, but further, we are called to challenge those who put obsticles in the way of people knowing God, particularly where social taboos are concerned. So this text has much to say to the modern church, and the importance of God's love mission to the world.
In the Alt Eucharist Service on Sunday 14th June, Ian Mobsby explored the theme of the abundance of the Kingdom of God and the scarcity of this world. This followed a very moving service last week where the community supported a couple recovering from a failed pregnancy. This podcast explored how Christians can go deeper in the faith which is a call to powerlessness, pain and struggle alongside the desire for peace and love.
Clare Catford, broadcaster, writer and member of the moot community, explores the theme of balance in the Moot Alt Eucharist on Sun 15th March 2009 on the third sunday in the season of Lent. Clare explores the theme in the context of her own life experience, particularly the challenge of facing and living with depression.
The Moot Rhythm of Life Specifices Balance as:
We aspire to live with integrity in the City, striving as a community for balance between work, rest and play. We wish to develop healthy spiritual disciplines such as daily prayer, meditation and contemplation, drawing on the ancient Christian paths. We want to live within our means, living sustainable lives. We desire to not be simply consumers, but people committed to giving and receiving in all of life.
Doerthe Rosenow, a member of the Moot Community explores the importance of Hospitality in new forms of church. She challenges the default position of consumption - a cultural norm, and the call for Christians to be counter cultural in seeking to get beyond individualism and me-isms. She draws on Moot's Rhythm of Life Section on Hospitality:
hospitality We wish to welcome all who we come across, when we are gathered and when we are dispersed, extending Christ’s gracious invitation to relationship, meaning and life in all its fullness through our deeds, words and thoughts.
Ian Mobsby explores this months theme of the Moot Community, exploring why the Christian tradition venerates Saints. Rather than these people being towering figures of strength, many were pretty ordinary people striving for faith and spirituality in a somewhat difficult world. What is it about these ordinary but complex radicals and mystics that makes them saints? And what can they teach us about strength from our weaknesses? How do our wounds become the basis for hope, love and action?
2 Corinthians 4
For it is God who said, ‘Let light shine out of darkness’, who has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ... But we have this treasure in clay jars, so that it may be made clear that this extraordinary power belongs to God and does not come from us. We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed; always carrying in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be made visible in our bodies. For while we live, we are always being given up to death for Jesus’ sake, so that the life of Jesus may be made visible in our mortal flesh. So death is at work in us, but life in you.
Clare Catford, broadcaster, writer, theologian and member of the the Moot Community in London, explores the title ‘affluenza: how to get beyond consuming to try and fill your empty soul’. Addiction is a very real issue in our contemporary culture, and one that needs careful thought and consideration from spiritual perspective. Clare draws on her own experience in dialogue with a number of scriptures from the Bible to explore this issue with some depth. This homily is a re-recording of a homily given by Clare at a Moot alt.eucharist service in June 2008. The Moot Community read together the book ‘Affluenza’ by Oliver James. Clare Catford has written a book entitled ‘addicted to love’ exploring the issue of addiction from a personal and spiritual perspective. Clare will be speaking about her book and her experiences with addiction at this year's Greenbelt Festival in August 2008.
Ian Mobsby, one of the co-founders of the Moot Community, explores the example of Thomas in the way of discipleship. In a world of increasing fanaticism, the place of faith and doubt as a mechanism that drives mature faith formation of the grey and not the 'black and white' is crucial to our journey of faith. Thomas enables us all to have hope that as we go through cycles of construction, deconstruction and reconstruction, that we are growing into out 'human becomingness'
In fact Jesus even models this process in his own life of incarnation (birth, blessing, construction), testing & crucifixion (deconstruction) and resurrection (reconstruction). It is not an easy journey for us to follow. But it is not a journey where will not be tested and doubt.
Being a 'back-slider' is an authentic part of the journey. Those who don't, are stuck in fundamentalism. The Emerging church, is inspiring us to live with an emerging faith.
Ian Mobsby gives an address on the place of Good Friday in the passion of Holy Week. He explores how Good Friday can ever be considered good in salvation history. This was part of a traditional Anglican Good Friday Service, which begins with the ministers prostrating themselves on the floor before the altar as a dramatic sign of the cost of the Cross for Christ.
Good Friday. How is it possible, that on this day, when we remember Jesus the man and his painful walk from Jerusalem, carrying his cross to the hill of Golgotha. When we humanity killed the incarnation of God in human flesh. How can this Friday possibly be called Good? Good Friday?
Phil Medley, one of the Pastoral Assistants at St Matthews, gave this considered and heart-felt address to the Moot Community in an alt.Eucharist service drawing on John's gospel narrative of the raising of Lazarus. In it, Phil explores the importance of emotional intelligence - or being real, and following Christ as he was fully human and emotional. Phil challenges us follow this Jesus who does not hide from our emotions and the suffering of the world, but who beckons us to follow him to find liberation and love.
And Jesus was disturbed by the crying of Mary & Martha and the Jews that followed them ... And Jesus wept ... So Jesus stood before the tomb ... And said ... Lazarus come out ... And said ... loosen the bands that bind him.
Ian Mobsby of the Moot Community, reflects on the connection between spiritual hunger and knowing God as part of a Lent Spirituality Course through the Moot 'Beyond the Wilderness' event in the SW1 Art Gallery in London.
There is a profound link between a spiritual thirst, prayer and encountering Christ today.
Mother Teresa put it well when after four hours at prayer, she said to a gathering of people:
"Jesus wants me to tell you again ... how much is the love He has for each one of you--beyond all what you can imagine. Not only He loves you, even more--He longs for you. He misses you when you don't come close. He thirsts for you. He loves you always, even when you don't feel worthy. Why does Jesus say 'I thirst'? What does it mean? Something so hard to explain in words-- ... 'I thirst' is something much deeper than just Jesus saying 'I love you.' Until you know deep inside that Jesus thirsts for you--you can't begin to know who He wants to be for you. Or who he wants you to be for him."
This is the profound mystery about the nature of contemplative forms of prayer. That through the Holy Spirit, and the power of our imagination, we too can encounter Christ - today.
Nicholas Papadopulos of St Peter's Eaton Square led the first reflection in the first week in Lent exploring the theme "Who can you trust?". This is the first week of moot community arts lenten reflection called "beyond the wilderness". The reflection ends on three questions for spiritual reflection
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On the 4th Sunday of Lent 2010, Ian Mobsby explores the theme of passions and virtues, and the need for inner freedom. Reflecting on the parable of the Prodigal Son and the story of Jesus going into the desert for 40 days, Ian explores the call for people to face their innerselves, their thinking and their sense of inner health. Moot is beginning its exploration as a New Monastic Community, to explore the need for some explicit spiritual practices, virtues and postures to assist people to go deeper with the Community's Rhythm of Life.
On February 3rd, Martin Newell who is a member of the 
At the Alt Eucharist Service of the Moot Community on the 14th February 2010, Clare Catford explores the whole issue of seeking God in the details of life. This importantly includes the difficulties of living, in our journeys of human becoming. We do not need to feel ashamed or hidden. We are all broken, and it is helpful to live out the struggles of our lives in community, where others can encourage us to be whole both emotionally and physically. Hiding your struggles and shame can become toxic, that prevent wellbeing and a healthy spirituality. God loves us, even in our brokenness.
In the second of two events, Dave Tomlinson leads a Moot Wednesday evening gathering to discuss his new book Re-enchanting Christianity. Dave explored the idea of a 'second innocence' developed by a number theologians, to explore the reconstruction of a faith that can engage with the reality of the twenty first century. For more information on Dave's book, click 
In the Alt Eucharist Service on Sunday 14th June, 
Doerthe Rosenow, a member of the Moot Community explores the importance of Hospitality in new forms of church. She challenges the default position of consumption - a cultural norm, and the call for Christians to be counter cultural in seeking to get beyond individualism and me-isms. She draws on Moot's Rhythm of Life Section on Hospitality:
