I recently had the opportunity to attend Oak Hill College’s annual School of theology event. This year the title was: Class and Ministry in the UK Today. It is a one-day event, although for me it was three days, and it showed how evangelicals, while often cast as those who don’t do privilege, class and poverty too well, actually do – and are looking to God to do it better!
It formed one day of an “Impact Week” for the students, to enable them, as future leaders in churches, to start to build an understanding of the wider social, and therefore ecclesial, landscape they will minister into. You can’t escape politics or culture – you can either do them well or poorly, or just ignore it, but they will never go away.
Day One was with current Oak Hill students doing teaching and open Q&A with the other speakers. Day Two was the conference proper, and Day Three hosting some students in my South East London parish.
Monday was the practical and theory day, and we had John Funnel from Noddfa in Wales, initially self-supporting with only a few faithful pensioners in his church, to now over 300, and a ministry that works with local agencies to support thousands across the community. His is truly a church that has made its place in the area invaluable and that has been recognised. And John has done it without any compromise on how he preaches, teaches and ministers. Personally, the big point of interest was that John was working with a near homogenous group of people from the Welsh Valleys, whereas I minister in an area that now has 38 different first languages in the local school, meaning 38 different people groups on my patch, many of whom dislike others. Hyper-diversity doesn’t begin to touch it, but our approaches had both areas of direct similarity with complete difference – both saw the core human need of the “full-fat Gospel”, that life-changing encounter with Christ, as non-negotiable, while in terms of simply culture, how you shape ministry to Welsh men from the Valleys is not the same as Zimbabwean women in South East London. This was the source of many questions from the students.
Gary Jenkins, Dean of Estates for Southwark Diocese looked at how class is more a culture than an economic category, even though the two clearly overlap, and finally, Natalie Williams (Jubilee Plus) spoke about coastal poverty, but her main focus was on how she, as a unmarried working class woman, did not fit so many of the leadership models that evangelicals often work with, yet she was now a CEO. There is a need to look beyond externals to the gifts and callings God places deeper within people.
Tuesday was the conference proper, and Matthew Sleeman (Oak Hill Vice Principal) opened with an excellent overview of what class is and isn’t and how it has been shaped by history and political and philosophical movements, and become described using ever more subdivided categories. Previously class was predicted on landownership, but the Industrial Revolution changed paradigm, which then got further shaped by political ideas in the Victorian period. Both the world wars reshaped the landscape (poverty creates political problems, so let’s avoid that happening again), and various recessions, crashes and de-industrialisation in the last few decades further complicates the picture to include those who would be “generationally non-working working class”
The second session led by London City Mission was based around three short vignettes (acted out Archers like – middle-class Radio 4 reference point!) that showed how (unintentionally) assumptions can be made about people and situations, and how then the gold can be missed – e.g. talking about your mortgage or skiing holiday in a sermon as if it was a common lived experience for all in the congregation, when the single parent is simply wondering how to get to the end of the week.
The afternoon had seminars on hyper-diversity, class on urban estates, class in coastal towns, and class in post-industrial communities followed by the final session by Kirsten Birkett with her quiet yet powerfully spoken scholarship on full view. However, one comment she made remained with me: “We are primarily children of God rather than demographic categories.”, and by always bringing it back to the Gospel she rooted and rounded off the day wonderfully.
On Wednesday some students came to see what we do on Thamesmead, considering everything from badly thought through architecture and local infrastructure, via using local gifting to the fullest, ending with a session with the local Church Army Evangelist with the very people we had been thinking about for the past two days.
Privilege, class and poverty are tricky but unavoidable issues for the church today, and Oak Hill provided an excellent way in for those called to truly engage our society.
Revd Jonathan Macy leads a church in Thamesmead, London and is author of Sowing Seeds with Songs of Joy: Growing God’s Garden In Forgotten Places, which was published in 2025.
Sowing Seeds with Songs of Joy: Growing God’s Garden In Forgotten Places
Most books about church in areas of deprivation focus on urban and estate contexts, however this book understands the catchment area extends to rural and coastal areas, recognising that a key demographic of these areas is those with a disability. Using a mix of personal anecdote, interviews with church leaders and social research, alongside extended reflection on Scripture, this book aims to help those with few resources see who and what God has given them and build from there. It commends the reader to look locally, plough their field, throw on fertiliser, and see what grows. The challenge is to let the church reflect what appears, not prune on the assumption of a preconceived vision. Leaders must not be slaves to a system or structure, but servants of the people God has given them, growing them to His glory and service. Where this happens one sees that while you need more skills to lead this kind of church compared to a larger one, God is with you and does provide.
The book can be purchased via Amazon – here
