Ordinary People. A Podcast‪.‬ Grace Community Church

Note: There are a few connection glitches in this recording. Hopefully, it won’t affect your enjoyment too much.

Racism and refugees with Nathaniel Jennings

Nathaniel, Area Mobiliser for OMF International, has worked alongside Embrace NI “a group of Christians working together to promote positive responses to people seeking asylum, refugees, migrant workers and people from minority ethnic backgrounds in Northern Ireland.” We’ve come a long way as a society in tackling racism, but sadly it still exists – quite often in
“covert” forms.

Nathaniel opens up about his own experiences, and what changes he’s seen in his 10 years living in Northern Ireland. As a Christian, Nathaniel’s interested in how the church, in particular, can constructively talk about topics of race, including BLM, immigration and diversity as well as work to eradicate racist attitudes.

https://grace-community.church/programme/everyone-welcome

In 2008, Pete Kernoghan visited Thailand and came across the world of sex trafficking for the first time. Stand Out International — an early model for No More Traffic — began with the help of Viva Networks and Chab Dai.

2012 marked No More Traffik being registered as a charity with its focus on raising awareness around modern slavery here in Northern Ireland.

Human trafficking is a reality in our society, and it’s happening not far from our homes. So what can we do about it? Pete shows us what we should look out for and how we can report suspicious behaviour.

We finish off the episode by looking at how ethical storytelling plays a part in navigating this subject.

https://grace-community.church/programme/modern-slavery

Football, school and community with Neil Megaw and Gary McCoo Neil Megaw is chairman of Richhill Amalgamated Football Club and works as a principal in Newtownhamilton High School. Gary McCoo — born and raised in Richhill — is also a key part of RAFC, and runs Richhill’s Facebook page. Just a couple of days before recording, Armagh I awarded Gary Sports Person of the Year Award.

Both men are deeply involved in life in the village. In this episode, they reflect on the effect of COVID on the life of schools, sport and local business, but also how the community stepped up to work through the pandemic.

https://grace-community.church/programme/good-sports

Celebrity and community psychology with Dr Arthur Cassidy

Arthur loves God and he loves working with people, especially people in the margins. His lively personality attracted the attention of the world of television where he was invited to analyse the psychological health of celebrities and reality stars.

More recently, he helped set up a branch of the Yellow Ribbon organisation which tackles the problem of suicide in our community.

https://grace-community.church/programme/hearts-and-minds

We’re recording this in lockdown. It’s been a year of trying to cope with and understand one of the worst pandemics the world has known.

It’s a multifaceted crisis that’s affecting so many professions. We’re looking at it from the point of view of the local practice, the hospital and the pharmaceutical bio-molecular level of the virus and vaccine themselves.

Lynsey and Jo are both practice nurses. Lynsey Lucas has been using social media to inform the community of the importance of doing our bit.

Joanne Garland has worked in the COVID-Centres as well as working on the frontline in ICU and faced all the emotions and fears of individuals and families at the worst times.

Sunil Parthasarathy has spent his life studying life at a molecular level and has worked with viruses themselves in the laboratory.

https://grace-community.church/programme/hands-face-space

The rich/poor divide with Mark Knox

Ordinary People alumnus, Mark Knox began Aspire NI – an organisation that tutors kids who are growing up in Brownlow, and other parts of Craigavon – about 3 years ago. Around that time, he was part of a church plant in the area (Cara, Craigavon).

He runs us through the stats and how we’ve got to a situation where there’s such a huge divide between the rich and poor in our community. He also challenges some of the assumptions people make around local children in poverty, and encourages a stance of ​“informed naïveté”.

To help us understand what’s going on, we head down the road of meta-modernism. It’s a philosophy that’s not a philosophy.

https://grace-community.church/programme/informed-naivite