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In this podcast, Ian Mobsby interviews Fr Martin Newell, who is a member of the Catholic Worker movement in the UK, and Trident Ploughshares, which seek to challenge the use of weapons of mass destruction and the arms trade by protest and direct action.  Martin is a Roman Catholic Priest, and has gone to prison for his involvement in this radical approach to the Christian life. In this interview Martin shares his thoughts about a radical approach to Christian discipleship focused on justice, resistance and a focus on the poor.  The Catholic Worker movement has much in common with new monasticism in seeking to build a new society and the importance of community living out shared values through a rhythm of life.  Most interesting, was Martin’s thoughts of seeing Prison as a New Monastry as a consequnce of living out this form of discipleship.  Martin and the Catholic Worker movement are a real inspiration and hope!

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In the Moot Alt Eucharist on the 11th October 2009, Jemma Allen explores friendship as the sacramental outpouring of God’s love. Jemma reflects on the key Gospel phrase ‘I have called you friends…’ with a God who identifies friendship with sinners and drunkards.  So it is through friendship that God’s purposes are outworked, transforming all things back into restored relationship with God.  Therefore, friendship lies at the heart of the Christian life, that changes us and draws us into closer relationships with the divine.  Loving our neighbours and our God.  Friendship is the antedote to the structures of dominance and individualism that stand in opposition to  the justice, peace and liberation that we proclaim when we confess a faith in Christ.  Jemma is Chaplain at Waikato University and the Ex-ile Alternative Worship Community in Hamilton, North Island New Zealand.

Friendship is not some gimmick that we can market as a way of successfully living a Christian life.  It is not even primarily about about an act of will or making friendships in a calculating way.  Friendship as a spiritual practice, as the mark of a disciple, as a proclamation of the Good News of the Reign of God  – this friendship is about entering into authentic relationships, relationships of vulnerability and trust, relationships of mutuality and care.  In allowing ourselves to be affected by who we live with and how we live with them, by the gifts we receive in and from our friends, we open ourselves to being transformed by love and so enlarging the realm of God: the kinship and new community proclaimed by Christ.  That, my friends, would be Good News!

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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.

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In this podcast of Moot’s Little Service in February 2009, Ian Mobsby explores why accountability is so important in the areas of justice, love and spirituality. In the service, people explored their perceived accountability to God, to themselves, and to others.

At this time, the Moot Community is exploring its ‘new monastic’ elements of its Rhythm of Life, to dig deep, in preparation for the community to recommit to these vows on Easter Saturday 2009, in the Crypt of London’s St Paul’s Cathedral.

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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.

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This year more than ever, the times don’t seem to fit with the traditional pattern of Christmas. Yet into this complex season, Christmas does enter once the schools have broken up, the office parties have ended, and work slows we are left with this uncomfortable pause when we remember that we are human. This reflection seeks to reflect on the significance of the birth of God in human form for us today.

‘Look, Mary shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall name him Emmanuel’, which means, ‘God is with us.’

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In this alternative eucharist on the third sunday of advent, Ian Mobsby and the moot community explore the example of mary regarding discipleship, call waiting, the expectation of the Incarnation and the birthing of the Kingdom of God. The podcast begins with a reflection on the Song of Mary recorded in the Gospel of Luke:

My soul proclaims to the greatness of the Lord My spirit rejoices in God my Saviour For he has brought favour on his lowly servant. From this day all generations will call me blessed, The Almighty has done great things, and Holy is God’s name.

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Drawing on the famous text in Matthew, Ian Mobsby (drawing on the writings of N.T.Wright) explores the implications of Jesus’ call to give to Caesar what is Ceasar’s, and to give to God what is God’s. For the last 500 years, there has been a divide between the sacred and the secular. However, recently, we have redescovered that not only is this wrong, but it is a myth. The truth as this text says, is that we find the sacred in the secular. Hence why Jesus acted and did what he did, with an incarnational sense of vocation. The change then for us is explore what this dual Citizenship means practically

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