My conversation with Alexandra (Alex) Ellish begins with her early childhood in South Africa, including enjoyable experience in Presbyterian church, with a relaxed faith home environment. When she moved to the UK at 15 she found no Presbyterian church in Kent, so made her way into the Baptist church, encountered Anabaptism. [0-5:58] We also talk about her call to ministry, outside the church, motivated by the teachings of Jesus, even as the church didn’t recognize women as ministers. [5:58-12:30] Along with this, Alex shares her experiences and intuitions about poverty and privilege, especially around race, as a white person, from South Africa, and how we might come to a sense of positive identity and engagement in and with a social and community formation. [12:30-22:50]
We then turn to her explicit call to ministry, connection to Baptist ministry throughout Europe, and through that, Urban Expression, an organization that seeks to plant churches on the margins (mostly in urban contexts). [22:50-32:45] This flows into a discussion of “peace,” “pacifism,” “peace-making”, “shalom”, all-things reconciled as the work of God/Jesus [32:45-39:00], what what peace-making shalom work might look like in a local church and its community, perhaps focusing on “community organizer,” as sort of Baptist “parish priest”, with a geographical sense of calling. [39:00-48:50] This touches on what we, in Jesus-shalom, call renovation (within church) and reconstruction (outside church). Check out our recent blog post on this.
Alex then shares a bit about how she talks about Jesus, both within and outside of the church in her context, touching on how Jesus might be encountered and trusted as a wise guide for life, as a starting point (or rather than) lord and king. [48:50-60:23] And we conclude with conversation around questions and challenges with regard to shalom values, including some conversation about the recent book “Being Interrupted”. [60:23-75:10]
Photo by v2osk on Unsplash