Mission From Below

Growing a Kingdom Community

Janet Hodgson

• Publisher: Sacristy Press
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9781910519790
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Ministry

"a book that needs to be taken very seriously"
— Philip North —

"challenging lessons for the modern church"
— Michael Turnbull —

This is a radical and controversial challenge to the top-down leadership models that are so widespread in the church, instead making the case for a new model of people-driven servant leadership, guided by the Holy Spirit towards kingdom growth rather than church growth.

Using the example of two Loreto Sisters working alongside one of the most socially-deprived communities in North East England, we see how they listened to and affirmed people who felt forgotten and had lost hope. As servant leaders, the Sisters were gradually able to empower the residents of Port Clarence on the River Tees to confront the many injustices heaped upon them, and to take action in improving their lives.

Mission From Below is an inspiring example of how a seriously neglected community can bring about its own transformation without any fads or initiatives imposed from on high by the church.

Notes

1 Evening Gazette (a Teesside newspaper based in Middlesbrough), June/August 1986.

2 In North America the original Italian spelling of Loretto is used.

3 Fr Austin Smith, in a keynote address delivered at the fourth International Stauros Congress on Powerlessness, Duquesne University, USA, June 1985. See also his Passion for the Inner City: A Personal View (Sheed and Ward, 1983) and Journeying with God: Paradigms of Power and Powerlessness (Sheed and Ward, 1990). Fr Smith died in 2011 aged 82.

4 Teesport is now the third largest port in the UK and amongst the ten biggest in Western Europe.

5 The Stockton and Darlington Railway linked Stockton-on-Tees with coalfields in the Shildon area via Darlington. It was extended to Middlesbrough in 1831. See <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stockton_and_Darlington_Railway>.

6 The Clarence Railway was owned by a Londoner, Christopher Tennant. The line was taken over by the Stockton and Hartlepool Railway, a subsidiary of the Hartlepool Docks and Railway Company, to allow quicker onward shipment from Hartlepool’s new docks. This became part of the North Eastern Railway in 1865. See <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clarence_Railway>.

7 Some of the historical information has been retrieved from <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Port_Clarence> and <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haverton_Hill>.

8 See <http://www.gracesguide.co.uk/Isaac_Lowthian_Bell>.

9 I am indebted to Ann Appleton, brought up in Port Clarence, for invaluable information during this early period drawn from her MA dissertation on Local History (CNAA) at Teesside Polytechnic, “A Colony of Workmen: The Socio-Economic Development of Port Clarence 1851–1881” (<http://www.freewebs.com/portclarence/18511881.htm> created by Marsha Mulloy).

10 BBC on the internet: “Domesday Reloaded—Port Clarence and Haverton”, <http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/domesday/dblock/GB-448000-522000/page/2>.

11 Mary Whitaker (née Appleton), “Growing up in Port Clarence in the 1950s and 60s”, in Appleton, MA dissertation (<http://www.freewebs.com/portclarence/1950s1960s.htm> created by Marsha Mulloy).

12 Cited in Appleton, MA dissertation. Florence Bell’s book was published by Ernest Arnold (London, 1907).

13 Louise Gwynne-Jones, “Seal Sands: 1000 years of Industry alongside Nature” (<http://www.stocktonteesside.co.uk/seal-sands---teesmouth-national-nature-reserve.html>). By the sixteenth century, this profitable salt industry had been eclipsed by that of South Shields. Boreholes were also sunk in Cowper Marsh.

14 It was first called the Government Nitrogen Factory. Brunner Mond renamed it the Synthetic Ammonia and Nitrates Company.

15 See <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Billingham_Manufacturing_Plant>. New industries included plastics for aircraft cockpits, and synthetic petrol made from hydrogenated carbon (coal) for aircraft fuel. In the Second World War, atomic research also took place on the site and a nuclear reactor was later developed there.

16 Retrieved from <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haverton_Hill> and “Furness Shipbuilding Co” from Grace’s Guide to British Industrial History (<http://gracesguide.co.uk/Furness_Shipbuilding_Co>). The yard was part of the Furness, Withy and Co shipbuilding empire based at Hartlepool and built colliers, tramps, deep-sea tankers, diesel-electric ships (the first in the North Sea), whaling vessels, and twin-funnelled passenger/cargo liners.

17 See <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tees_Transporter_Bridge>. It is one of only three in Britain.

18 The BBC programme was in the third series of Auf Wiedersehen, Pet (2002).

19 Whitaker, “Growing up in Port Clarence”.

20 The 2011 Census gave the High Clarence population as 773.

21 Farrar, Straus and Cudahy, 1958.

22 Catherine Cookson received an OBE in 1985 and was created a Dame of the British Empire in 1993. On her death, she left most of her fortune to charity.

23 Ellen Wilkinson, The Town That Was Murdered (Victor Gollancz, 1939).

24 Geoff Miller, “The Feast of St Cuthbert, Bishop of Lindisfarne”, St Nicholas’ Cathedral, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, November 2000.

25 Thomas Ward, Gazette Live, <http://www.gazettelive.co.uk/>, April 2012.

26 Information in the following sections is drawn from a number of reports, including the social entrepreneur research reports and articles, and from the IBVM Sisters’ reports and personal interviews. See also Jeanne Hinton, “Laying Ghosts in Teesside” in Hinton, Changing Churches: Building Bridges in Local Mission (Churches Together in Britain and Ireland, 2002), pp. 72–79.

27 Ofsted report for High Clarence Primary School, October 2013, <https://reports.ofsted.gov.uk/provider/files/2278533/urn/111523.pdf>.

28 Lucy Richardson, The Northern Echo, 5 December 2013.

29 <http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-tees-17431427>.

30 Evening Gazette, June/August 1986.

31 Cited in “Toxic Waste”, The Economist, October 2000, p. 41.

32 The main employers at this time were the Bell Brothers, Clarence Iron Works, The Salt Union Ltd, United Alkali Company Ltd, Anderston Foundry Company, the Cement Works at Haverton Hill, and The Coal Distribution Company at Port Clarence.

33 Margaret Hebblethwaite (ed.), The Living Spirit: Prayers and Readings for the Christian Year (Rowman and Littlefield, 2000), p. 194.

34 A Manual of Anglo-Catholic Devotion (Hymns Ancient ...