Simplicity, Love and Justice

“Having spoken to several of those who listen to these talks regularly, it seems to be a good idea to add a link to this 10-week course which first saw the light of day in 2004 when published by Alpha. I updated it earlier this year. 

There follows the Preface from the Summer 2025 edition together with some Reviews and the original Foreword so those who might be interested can get a sense of what it is about. 

I plan for it to be available early next year.” – James Odgers – 2025

Preface

This course book was first published by Alpha/HTB in 2004 – and Sandy Millar, then the vicar there, wrote a very kind foreword. But that is some 21 years ago and the world and the Church in this country have both moved on a long way since then. This is an updated edition, whilst the last edition in 2008 was no more than a reprint.

Many hundreds of people have done this course over the years, and a few of their reactions follow on the next page. I believe it continues to be a useful resource for home groups and whole Churches – especially those who have been involved, or want to be involved, in ministries with the poor in their local area. As I say in the foreword, we developed these materials to accompany one particular ministry – The Besom (now, www.thebesomnetwork.org) which I founded in 1987 after returning from working with Jackie Pullinger in Hong Kong, and which still flourishes in other hands.

Many of us feel inadequate or fearful and do not know how to start helping others in need. The Besom seeks to assist those who want to to get out into their local community in a variety of very practical, down-to-earth ways, painting or decorating the flats of those who are compelled to live in degrading housing, helping with the gardening of those too old to do it for themselves, supplying good quality furniture for mums being rehoused out of refuges and many more. We found that many of those returning from such projects came back not just very moved and with tales of lives transformed by their simple acts of kindness but wanting to think through what they had seen at a deeper level.

The faith of the Christ follower is incomplete unless we seek to follow John’s command in 1 John 2: 6: “Whoever claims to live in Him, must live as Jesus did“. And Jesus, of course, spent most of His time here on earth amongst the poor and the needy. So, working with the poor is not just for the select few but for all of us, however old, whatever our background and whether we have a lot or a little that we can give in terms of time, money, skills or things.

Since starting The Besom, my wife and I have spent much of our time encouraging others towards the poor. We were involved for some 16 years, as you will read in this book, in seeking to help mainly single mums and widows in the African- and Caribbean-heritage communities in South London to start up microbusinesses and to stand on their own feet, with all the dignity and self-confidence that that brings. We also established a training farm for new entrants in Somerset that concentrated on small business start up in traditional farming activities – see https://faithinthesoil.co.uk. In all that we have sought to do, we have tried to set up communities of believers who can help each other and then go out to help others. All have focussed on how we are best to live in a world that is so unequal and where so many do little more than survive at best.  

James Odgers – Summer 2025

Reviews

” People on the course were immediately stimulated and challenged.”

“People enjoyed discussing the issues the course raised and found it possible to relate to them, despite all being at very different stages of their Christian lives. The overwhelming positive is the quality and breadth of the materials. You could not fault the course for not being practical enough! Another real bonus has been that the course has given us a vocabulary for challenging each other about our lifestyles, how we spend our money, etc., which we previously lacked.”

“The emphasis is practical and people have been jogged into ‘doing’ something about it all.”

“We just finished the Simplicity course. We used it with a group of mums during the day time and it was a brilliant success, challenging all our mindsets and creating a lot of change!”

“I enjoyed it – I enjoy this full-on, confrontational challenge stuff as then something tends to click inside my head and heart!”

“Last night was a real impactful evening for me and the others who attended. The Spirit was truly at work, and I appreciated the openness and intimacy with which we talked about our money and giving.”

“The course spoke very powerfully to me in an issue I had been dealing with at work. In essence, the Lord provides for all our needs yet I wanted to badger bosses for more money rather than go and ask my heavenly father. I was then prompted to remember [a man] who prayerfully takes his financial needs to the Lord, who in turn has covered them, rather than go and ask friends for more money. Once this light was switched on, I was then able to recognise I have more than enough, and should I need more I will go to the Lord and ask him first.”

“Personal Money was a breakthrough area in my life. Hope I’ve formed a habit. I’m still doing it and still saving my £2.”

“…challenging…relevant… very thought-provoking and topical. The materials really made the group members think and take a step back. Many people’s lives have been dramatically altered and they are beginning to think about these issues seriously for the first time…”

“The group feel we have developed a pretty deep level of intimacy and openness with each other. People are in action in some way and are being challenged by the material. So the Spirit is working his stuff.”

“Suffice to say that we all found it extremely stimulating, challenging and useful. I think I can say with confidence that lives have been changed and continue to change. Personally, I enjoyed the course and have found a certain sense of release in a number or areas.”

“A remarkable piece of work, clearly the result of years of serious investigation into poverty and its causes… What I like most about it is that you get right down to the core of the issue from a biblical point of view, and the core is that I am the cause of poverty through my thoughtless, wasteful consumption habits, and so is everyone else.”

Foreword – Summer 2004

I saw the first, faint outline of the notice some time ago. It was clearly there – some way along the narrow road that leads to life – so it was unavoidable. It was just this side of a gateway leading on to the next part of my journey on that road. In some ways, even though I have a strong and passionate faith in Jesus, it could not have been a more unwelcome notice coming from my background in the UK: white, middle-class, male, public school, Oxford, City lawyer, banker and now, farmer.  I walked towards it reluctantly.

The writing on the notice was clear too. It said that as I passed through the gateway, I would begin to hear, as never before, the cries of the poorest and the most excluded on this planet – cries for food, cries for mercy, cries for rest, cries for justice, cries for love. My love.

I have passed through the gateway now and stand the far side of it. For the time being, at least, I find that I cannot close my ears to those cries. They are not deafening so much as urgent, heart-rending and desperate. And my heart is full of questions about the character of the God of love and justice, whom we worship, and about what it means to love Him. And to love our neighbour as we love ourselves.

God seems to be talking today to many people around the world who have passed through this gateway so I thought I would put some materials together to describe the lie of the land as I perceive it stretching out in front of me, in case this might help others. And it is all ahead: I have scarcely begun to work out how to set about what comes next. Please do not think otherwise. Of one thing I am sure: if the body of Christ in this country is ever to see our God heal this land of ours, this is a gateway through which he will be calling many more in the days to come.

The road ahead begins with this question: how can I live as I do when those who send up these agonised cries to an all-loving God live as they do?

My journey up to now has been a testimony to the extraordinary perseverance and love shown to me by God and by other people. God’s love for you and me is a fiercely jealous one and he will pursue us relentlessly until we turn and requite it. Those He sent to tell me of that love faced what must have seemed an insurmountable task. At every step I would run off, at every mention of the Gospel I would smile knowingly and explain why it was not for me. And yet it was, of course – as it is for all of us.

After a forensic – and rather arrogant – examination of the evidence over several years (I was a rookie lawyer then, after all!) I discovered to my surprise and discomfort that the Gospel record was a true one. This affected my life, however, not one jot because an intellectual faith is no faith at all. In Hong Kong I met several of those who had been healed immediately and painlessly of long-term heroin addiction in the ministry of Jackie Pullinger-To and I realised for the first time that if Jesus was alive today he would naturally be working in the same ways and in the same places as He did when he was here incarnate. The transformed lives of those men were a sufficient proof of that rather obvious fact. And it was then that my heart began to break for the poor and the marginalised. Jackie’s description of poverty, by the way, is useful: “Broadly speaking, we will interpret the poor as those who for some time are unable to free themselves from poverty and who need help.“

Yet I still continued along a path I chose rather than His path for me. Two years later He showed me how determined He is to ensure that we go His way and not ours. That unequal battle took me spiralling down to a very dark place from which I could not go on in my own strength. And I surrendered, at last, and then He began to show me some of the astonishing things He had prepared for me. At His behest, I left the law to go to work with Jackie and returned to found a sort of bank with three others in the City of London (that He blessed outrageously) and to start The Besom (www.besomnetwork.org). I left the bank after seven years to establish FACE to Face, a ministry that encourages self-employment among the poor in our churches.

“One goes more quickly to heaven from a hut than from a palace.” – St Francis of Assisi

Besom is a response to the chasm that yawns ever wider between those of us who have, and can give, and those in need. It provides a tiny and rickety bridge to help us to cross that chasm and it challenges us as we go.

Often at The Besom, people come back from the other side of the divide not just excited about the transformation in the lives of those they have assisted but also with questions about their response to what they have seen, often for the first time: people living in circumstances of extreme degradation; people so lonely they are on the verge of suicide; people hungry for food and for love. Their love. And the questions inexorably lead on to other questions – not about the people on the receiving end but about us, those of us who have and can give. Poverty is not primarily about the poor but about those of us who have the means to alleviate it. Exclusion is not about the excluded but about we who do the excluding. Marginalisation is not about the marginalised but about we who do the marginalising. Love – the sort of love that God the Father showed when he sent his Son to die for you and for me, that sort of love – is said by St Paul to have been poured into our hearts by his Spirit. Yet if it has been, as St John wrote, then we are bound to assist all those in need that we come across and whose needs we can diminish or assuage. If we do not, he asks, ‘how can the love of God be in’ us? How indeed!

John Stott, in New Issues Facing Christians Today, writes that ‘simple living is not incompatible with [the] careful enjoyment’ of whatever we have been given, or have earned with the gifts and talents God has given us [1]. I agree up to a point (for Jesus came that we might have life in all its fullness) but that enjoyment – in the sense of using for our own pleasure – will inevitably be subordinate to the demands of love and these are never ‘careful’ in the worldly sense of prudent but instead often require the imprudent use – even the seeming waste – of time and resources, the going of extra miles and the incurring of cost or even sacrifice. So, love will reduce what there is to ‘enjoy’ and thus will lead us to a much more simple but rich lifestyle – one that would reflect more obviously a deep compassion for those in need. That way, and only that way, lies integrity. These materials are designed to assist us to discover a response to the love he showed us; a response to the cries of those in need; a response to that inevitable question ‘How can I …, when they…?’.

What follows has only come about thanks to two extraordinary people. The first is Perry-May Ward. She travelled with me and my family in 1998 and 1999 during our research into different ways in which people sought to alleviate poverty in the most degrading and hopeless parts of the world. She began assembling these materials on our return, before she moved to work on a very difficult council housing estate in the UK. Ruth Valerio took over the task in Spring 2000 having left her then role as Head of Social Responsibility at the Evangelical Alliance. Perry-May and Ruth seem to me to have rushed through the gateway long since with a joy and determination that show a level of faith and trust that I can only long for.

It is really Perry-May and Ruth who, between them, have written and sorted the materials which follow and turned them into ten moderately bite-sized chunks. Frankly, they have done far more, far more effectively, than I. Everything that is good and right is down to them. The mistakes, omissions, non sequiturs and tendentious comments, of which there are many, are mine.

I would add my thanks to the team at Holy Trinity Brompton. They have been unswervingly generous over the years as Besom and FACE to Face have got up and running and have ever been a source of love and good advice. They are an amazing crowd and if you have yet to go on an Alpha course, despite all they have done to encourage you to do so, may I recommend that you hasten to the nearest one. I am also grateful to Miles and Deborah Protter, whose excited response to, and detailed comments on, the first draft of the materials encouraged me to persevere. My thanks too to Toria Gray, Julia Evans and Sarah Bibby at Holy Trinity Brompton, who have taken on the task of getting the materials from a recalcitrant Besom computer to the point of publication, and to all of those, too numerous to mention by name, who tested the materials and fed back their comments.

“We must be the change we wish to see in the world.“ – Gandhi

Four final points: first, I have not attempted to address specifically two fundamental issues both of which are keys to an understanding of the great divisions in our nation – those of taste and class. This is not because they are unimportant but rather that I believe they will inexorably surface in most sessions. Secondly, I apologise for any material that has been taken from another source but has been inadequately acknowledged. This has not been done intentionally, and I am very happy to acknowledge any such plagiarism in a later edition. Thirdly, I hope that these materials are seen as the tools they are intended to be, no more and no less; we are all in process, all being transformed into His likeness. But the journey takes a lifetime. And, as I said at the outset, I am probably no further along the road than you. Lastly, discussion about living more simply has attracted others from different faiths (and none) for years. The body of Christ is late into the field or peaked too early – perhaps in the thirteenth century! Some of the examples and quotations which follow might smack of the New Age, or of sandals and Woodstock, or of a ‘back to the earth’ movement, but they are nonetheless valid for all that if they provoke. The difference, very often, is that the New Age seeks the divine within, whereas we worship and follow the model of a God Incarnate.

James Odgers 
Founder The Besom Summer 2004

“What is my new desert? The name of it is compassion. There is no wilderness so terrible, so beautiful, so arid and so fruitful as the wilderness of compassion. It is the only desert that shall truly flourish like the lily. It shall become a pool, it shall bud forth and blossom and rejoice with joy. It is in the desert of compassion that the thirsty land turns into springs of water, that the poor possess all things.” – Thomas Merton