Volume 10.4

In this issue we have another pot-pourri of thoughtfully written and often challenging articles.
Peter Heslam opens this edition with his timely and well-presented thoughts on how the slave trade abolitionists drew on their Christian faith to see Christian faith and business to be partners, rather than rivals, based on the appeal to common human liberty. Peter spells out implications of their thinking and action for us today.
Chris Bemrose draws on his experience with the L’Arche communities to articulate Characteristics of a Christian Organisation. L’Arche is a Federation of currently 131 communities in many countries providing home for 3000 people with learning disabilities. Not unsurprisingly, Chris uses the Christian understanding of family as a basis for his thinking. Such a starting point may seem counter cultural for those in larger organisations, yet the success of L’Arche and the hardheaded way this is implemented in a working environment brings new and surprising insights.
We are very pleased to be able to publish in full the text from the 2006 Hugh Kay Memorial Lecture. Stephen Green, as Group Chairman of HSBC Holdings plc gave this lecture by invitation of the Christian Association of Business Executives. Stephen reinforces many of the traditional understandings of good organisational and business practice.
Malcolm Torry reports on a new initiative to revive Industrial Mission within London. Such provision in recent years has been patchy at best, and non-existent in many areas. A large group of interested stakeholders from churches and business attended a conference recently to seek to revive and find new ways for Christian faith to speak to the very significant economy of London. This is their report on progress to date. We look forward to seeing how MiLE develops.
Keeping up to date with currently thinking in leadership can be intimidating, given the continual mass of many books and articles. Tim Harle helpfully guides us through some of the more significant books on leadership in recent years.
We hope you enjoy this edition. If you have, please feel free to submit articles, longer or shorter, and any news or events of interest to the editors for consideration. We would like to hear from you.