Finding Abundance
in Scarcity

Author Samuel Wells (Ed,)
Publisher Canterbury Press £14.99
Format pbk
ISBN 9781786223692

St Martin-in-the-Fields is a busy church with an international reputation, a large team of paid staff and volunteers and a wide-ranging ministry. Sam Wells is vicar there. Reading the back cover of this book, you might think this is the story of how a large and successful central London church has coped with the pandemic, and that it isn’t a book for you if you are in a smaller church. If you read as far as paragraph two on page one, you will see that this isn’t the case – far from it! Drawing contributions from leaders of a range of expressions of St Martin’s work, the book shows how the church responded to the changing world that the pandemic brought to us and, importantly, how they sought to see God at work – sometimes in the most unexpected areas. Alongside the narrative, there is an abundance of theological reflection offering pastoral insights and practical advice based on experience. I found this book stimulating and, in many ways, reassuring as we continue to be the Church for a different world.

Reviewed by CHRIS BRACEGIRDLE

Ministry