A first for us: this episode was recorded live, in the room, in front of the church — just after Dr Amy Orr-Ewing had finished speaking to us on forgiveness. It turns into one of the most wide-ranging conversations we’ve had on the podcast.

You can catch up on Amy’s ‘Forgiveness’ talk here: https://youtu.be/OK2P7MBYzpA?si=Fl6veB1mKgTYsK6z

We start with the question Amy’s Gen Z godson sent her after the tragedy at a Christian festival: how could something like this happen at a Christian event? Christian faith, she says, is the opposite of karma. It never draws the conclusion that a disaster was the sufferer’s fault, or that God doesn’t love them. It sets suffering inside a world where love required freedom, where we all live downstream of thousands of decisions — and where the last word is a God who wipes every tear away.

Then to Westminster Hall in 2023, weeks after the Coronation, where Amy addressed the National Parliamentary Prayer Breakfast — with her father, who came to this country as a refugee, sitting in the room. She chose to talk about forgiveness, and she explains why she thinks it is Christianity’s most useful gift to a culture soaked in outrage and grievance. Crucially, forgiveness that doesn’t minimise harm. The church’s great mistake, she argues, has been letting forgiveness be weaponised against victims — telling the abused to forgive and quietly enabling the abuser. The cross says the opposite: the harm mattered enough to cost the death of the Son of God.

Her advice for the rest of us — who will never get the platform of Westminster Hall, only the lift at work and the neighbour over the fence — is disarmingly practical.

The middle of the episode is pure adventure. In 1996, aged 19, Amy and two Oxford friends got into Taliban-held Afghanistan on visas obtained through a student newspaper. Getting out was harder — a missed train that only ran twice a week, landmines on both sides of a kilometre of no man’s land, a sandstorm, and a failed bribe, but then something miraculous.

Amy also opens up about recovering from trauma, and losing the ability to pray and what she did when she felt like a fraud.

Finally, with St Michael’s in its own season of rebuilding, Amy has a word on opposition: expect it, because it’s normal and not evidence that God has left the building. And they speak about rumours of the Quiet Revival.

Please note: this episode includes discussion of a recent tragedy, of trauma and therapy, and of abuse in religious settings. If you need support, go to: https://findahelpline.com

This episode is for:

• anyone wrestling with why God allows suffering — or being asked that question by someone they love

• anyone who has been told to forgive in a way that felt like being silenced

• Christians who want to speak about faith at work or with neighbours without going into broadcast mode

• leaders in a dry season, or anyone who has lost the ability to pray and feels like a fraud for it

• churches facing opposition mid-rebuild, and wondering how to be ready for people newly curious about faith

Mentioned in this episode:

Amy Orr-Ewing’s book Forgiveness: Reclaiming Its Power in a Culture of Outrage and Fear;

Amy’s Substack piece: https://amyorrewing.substack.com/p/when-disaster-strikes

You can also follow Amy on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/amyorrewing

Make sure to subscribe to this channel too, and we’d love to see you on a Sunday soon.

https://stmichaelschestersquare.org/

https://www.instagram.com/stmichaelschestersquare/

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We live in a moment defined by division and cultural outrage – and forgiveness has never looked more impossible, or more beautiful.

What does it actually mean to forgive – and where on earth does the power to do it come from?In this talk, Dr Amy Orr-Ewing takes us through Jesus' teaching on forgiveness, and makes the case that Christian forgiveness is nothing like the version we've inherited from the culture. It isn't "letting it go". It isn't pretending the harm didn't happen, or that it didn't cost you. Forgiveness begins by naming the debt – and the loss is real.

She explains why "turn the other cheek" is an act of defiance rather than weakness, why forgiveness can be offered unconditionally while reconciliation still waits on repentance, and the extraordinary story of a mother who forgave the man who murdered her daughter – and eventually brought him home as her son.

Forgiveness is a radical counterpoint to the spirit of the age, whichever side of the political divide we sit on. Not because we can manage it on our own – but because of a grace we could only ever receive.

Amy joined us for our annual Sunday at Home. Stay tuned for the Equip Podcast episode with her later this week!

Almost fifty years ago, one of Jamie's predecessors, Charles Marnham, and his wife Tricia started a small group that would eventually grow into Alpha, the course now done by 38 million people around the world. Next year is the 50th anniversary, and Miles Toulmin is the one now overseeing it all globally.

Miles shares his own story — coming to faith just before university, doing Alpha as a student at St Aldate's in Oxford, and then, as the new employee in an office, nervously inviting the one colleague at the desk next to him. She said yes, brought half the office along, came to faith, and ended up running Alpha in a maximum-security prison in Peru. Years later, after ordination and a being Associate Vicar at HTB, Miles planted a church in Kuala Lumpur that baptised on average two new believers a week, every week, for ten years.

The heart of the conversation is a striking statistic: a Gallup poll found 4 million people in the UK know what Alpha is and want to do it — and the only reason they haven't is that no one has invited them. One in three people asked will say yes.

So Miles turns practical: He explains why the biggest reason a course stalls is choosing the wrong small-group hosts (and why it shouldn’t be your keenest evangelist), why you mustn't skip the Holy Spirit day — the engine under the bonnet — and why prayer undergirds the whole thing.

He shares the 'traffic light' way of integrating Alpha into a busy church. Looking ahead, Miles casts vision for a remade Alpha series built with and for Gen Z (launching 2027), a new schools edition of Alpha Youth, and contextualised versions being made for churches around the world — a fresh, generous, hospitable invitation to a country, and a generation, showing surprising signs of spiritual hunger.

This episode is for:

--church leaders wondering whether Alpha could become a genuine engine for their church, not just one more programme on the edge

--anyone who's tried Alpha before and felt it didn't 'work' in their context

--Christians who want to invite friends but aren't sure it's worth the risk of askingleaders reaching Gen Z and Gen Alpha, and anyone curious about the spiritual openness among young people right now

--anyone who loves a good story of God turning an ordinary invitation into something extraordinary

You can find out more at https://www.alpha.org/

You can follow Miles on Instagram at @mtoulmin https://www.instagram.com/mtoulmin/?hl=en

Make sure to subscribe, and we'd love to see you on a Sunday soon.

https://stmichaelschestersquare.org/

https://www.instagram.com/stmichaelschestersquare/

https://www.tiktok.com/@st.michaels.chester.sqr

God’s goodness and love aren’t distant promises. They pursue us through every season, even the darkest ones. As we stop striving and learn to receive His love, we discover the freedom to trust Him, rest in His presence and live from a place of overflow rather than lack.

God is not a distant shepherd. He presides over us, pursues us when we wander, and provides for us in every season. As we learn to trust His care, we can let go of worry, stay close to Him and His people, and seek His kingdom first.

Jamie Mulvaney sits down with Joel Burden — church leader of Saints KL and a branding expert — for a conversation about the one thing he reckons church leaders get wrong most often: trying to be like everyone else. As church after church springs up on every corner and social feed, the pressure to copy the bigger, shinier church down the road is huge. Joel's answer is to slow down and go one level deeper — to uncover what God is uniquely doing in your church, because there is no other church quite like it in the world.

You can find out more about Joel and his work here:

https://www.saints.my/

https://www.cloudcut.co/

Joel tells his own story too — moving from Sheffield to Malaysia at twenty-two with his wife, a small team and not much more than a suitcase, planting a church from scratch in a completely different culture. Eleven years on, it's thriving. His conviction, looking back, is that the anxiety over whether it would all work was misplaced: God had already gone before, already prepared the people and charted the path. The leader's job isn't to make everything come together — it's simply to be obedient and walk into it.

From there the conversation turns practical about the digital world. A church, Joel says, is not a bulletin board — social media done well isn't a one-way broadcast of names and dates, but a conversation that creates value first, much like a sermon that earns its call to action at the end. He unpacks why consistency beats bursts of effort, why it's a bit like sowing seeds, why 'no one cares as much as you' about how you look, and why people ultimately follow people, not organisations — which may mean the leader has to become the face. Along the way he shares how the C3 global network of 600+ churches lets leaders learn fast from one another, and how a simple idea borrowed and re-contextualised — the 'Dinner Parties' model — reshaped small groups at Saints KL.

And for any leader who feels stuck imitating others, or facing a future that looks unknown, Joel points to two things a busy ministry throws out fastest: space and prayer. Space to look up and see what God is doing right under your nose, and prayer to ask him to set a fresh fire in your heart for it.

This episode is for:

church leaders feeling the pressure to look like the bigger, shinier church down the road

anyone trying to work out what makes their church unique — and how to build around it rather than copy others

pastors and teams wanting to use social media as a conversation, not a bulletin board

leaders tempted to give up online because nothing they post seems to be landing

anyone stepping into an unknown future in ministry who needs to trust that God has already gone before them

Make sure to subscribe, and we'd love to see you on a Sunday soon.

https://www.stmichaelschestersquare.org

https://www.instagram.com/stmichaelschestersquare/

https://www.tiktok.com/@st.michaels.chester.sqr

Though we live in a world marked by fear, suffering and death, we are not powerless because Christ has overcome sin and death and leads us into life and peace. His presence gives us courage, His care keeps us close, and His victory reminds us that we belong to Him.

Jamie Mulvaney sits down with Dr Belle Tindall-Riley — editor of Mockingbird, podcaster, and author of The Sacred Ache — for a conversation that begins in the healing fields of Glastonbury and ends up somewhere far more surprising. In a culture where people are hiring Etsy witches, consulting the stars instead of therapists, and capitalising the U in Universe, Belle asks a beautifully disarming question: what if every spiritual craving — however misdirected — is actually pointing somewhere true?

Belle unpacks what she calls the ‘sacred ache’: the cosmic neediness that Augustine named, that C.S. Lewis felt, and that millions of people today are desperately trying to fill with manifestation, astrology, crystals, and energy healing. Rather than rolling her eyes or sounding the alarm, Belle does something rarer — she takes each practice seriously, traces the longing underneath it, and then gently shows where Christianity has been saying the same thing about our desires all along, only better.

The conversation gets into why witchcraft is having a feminist moment, what it really means that all we see is not all there is, why the Universe (capital U) is emotional self-protection, and the one thing Belle refused to write a chapter on.

This episode is for:

anyone with friends who manifest, read their birth chart, or describe themselves as ‘spiritual but not religious’

Christians who want to engage the culture around them without dismissing or demonising it

those curious about why Britain feels increasingly pre-Christian — and what that opens up

anyone who's ever felt that restless ache and not quite had words for it

readers looking for their next book recommendation (and a great one to give away)

Belle’s book The Sacred Ache is available now.

You can read her writing at ⁠mbird.com⁠ and ⁠seenandunseen.com⁠ 

And make sure to subscribe — we'd love to see you on a Sunday soon.

⁠https://stmichaelschestersquare.org/⁠

⁠https://www.instagram.com/stmichaelschestersquare/

https://www.tiktok.com/@st.michaels.chester.sqr

True rest isn’t found in escaping life, but in the presence of God. Psalm 23 reveals a Shepherd who finds us when we wander, carries us home, and provides what we cannot provide for ourselves. Our security isn’t in how tightly we hold onto God, but in how faithfully He holds onto us.

What does it really mean for God to be our Good Shepherd? The freedom of trusting God as our provider, letting go of self-sufficiency and believing that He will see to our needs. When anxiety tells us we have to figure everything out ourselves, we’re invited instead to know His voice, follow Him and trust His care.