Occasional Articles

Published by Jeremy Fagan on 30th November 2023

Inspiring Leadership – Emmie Bidston

MODEM Conference 2023 – Summary by Vaughan S. Roberts Inspiring Leadership – Emmie Bidston The speaker at this year’s MODEM day conference was Emmie Bidston who, with Katy Granville-Chapman, is co-author of Leader: Know, Love and Inspire your People. Her presentation was divided into three parts. First, she encouraged us to think about leadership and flourishing….

Published by Vaughan Roberts on 25th November 2020

‘The Best & The Worst’ – Stories & Blame

From the Chair – Vaughan S. Roberts In his book The Art of Political Storytelling (Bloomsbury Academic, 2020) Philip Seargeant provides a stimulating analysis of the role stories have in political life. It includes a section headed ‘Strategic Narratives’ (59-64) in which he argues: “The development of storytelling abilities was one of the key factors behind humankind’s…

Published by Matt Harbage on 3rd November 2020

Leadership in Protest

“If my name remains among the sponsors of the Catholic Peace Fellowship, it is because I believe that this dedicated group is sincerely striving to spread the teachings of the Gospel and of the Church on war, peace, and the brotherhood of man. However, my sponsorship does not imply automatic approval of any and every…

Published by Jeremy Fagan on 10th June 2020

From the new Chair – Vaughan S. Roberts

The editor of MODEM Matters has asked me to write a brief introduction about myself as I take up the role of Chair of MODEM. The first thing to do is express my thanks to David Sims for all that he’s done in his six years in that position. He will be a very hard…

Published by Jeremy Fagan on 9th January 2020

Prophetic Leadership

Nellie Bly was born in Pittsburgh, one of 15 children. As a young woman, she saw a newspaper article saying that women were only good for bringing up children and doing housework. She wrote a strong letter to the editor complaining about the letter, who was so impressed with the quality of her writing that…

Published by Jeremy Fagan on 5th July 2019

The Dog Ate my Homework

We all know the feeling; I had promised our excellent MODEM Matters editor, Jeremy Fagan, a ‘From the Chair’ piece by the end of June. I had a book I wanted to talk about, something which I think is really exciting in terms of what it says about church life and how it could grow…

Published by Jeremy Fagan on 1st April 2019

From the Chair, David Sims: Anxiety and the Holy Spirit

When I was a child there was a book called the ‘Age of anxiety’ on the bookshelf, although I don’t remember anybody ever looking at it. The title always fascinated me as a concept. Why would anyone let anxiety last for an age? Surely they would do something about it? On the other hand, it…