Rachel Arnold introduces a new report addressing the future direction of Christian social action. Download via the link below.

“Stand at the crossroads and look; ask for the ancient paths, ask where the good way is, and walk in it.”

Jeremiah 6:16

Something remarkable has happened in Britain over the past generation.

Across the country, Christians have responded to poverty with an extraordinary growth in social action. Food banks, debt centres, night shelters, housing projects, employment programmes and countless local initiatives have become part of the fabric of our communities.

Thank God for the people who show up, week after week. Without them, things would surely be worse.

There is, however, an uncomfortable question we need to ask.

I see the reason for it every day where I live in Armley, in Leeds. My husband is a vicar here and I work in a local community centre. Our church runs the busiest food bank in Leeds. There are another two food pantries nearby and our warm space is full every week.

I know a single mum locally who works hard and does everything she can for her children. Three years ago, she messaged us about a community event at church and told us she had 13p left in her purse. Recently, she wrote about struggling just to put the electricity on, let alone afford a bus ride or an ice cream for her children.

She isn’t a statistic. She’s someone I’ve got to know over the years. She’s brilliant, and she sometimes helps at our church community events herself.

Before coming to this work, I spent six and a half years leading Church Engagement at Christians Against Poverty. There too I saw the nature of poverty changing. We could help someone become debt free, only to see them fall back into difficulty. Increasingly, the problem wasn’t simply managing money better. Sometimes the numbers just didn’t add up.

And all this is happening despite an extraordinary expansion of Christian social action. In 2010/11, Trussell distributed around 60,000 emergency food parcels; by 2025, it was more than 2.6 million. Over the same period, churches have established debt centres, night shelters, food pantries, employment programmes and countless other forms of practical support.

Thank God they have. But when 21% of the UK population lives in poverty, we have to ask some difficult questions. What is Christian social action achieving? Where should our efforts go? And what should the future of church-based projects be?

Jon Kuhrt has been writing about these questions for many years. His thinking, alongside conversations with Jenny Sinclair of Together for the Common Good, gradually crystallised around three tensions, which he dubbed the “three sins of social action”

Charity without justice. Christians have become very good at responding to need. But are we asking often enough why that need exists in the first place?

Creating dependency Our desire to help is good. But can the way we help sometimes turn neighbours into passive recipients, overlooking their gifts, agency and capacity to contribute?

Secularisation. As Christian charities have professionalised and become increasingly dependent on external funding, many have become less confident about the faith that started the work in the first place. How do we address the slide into secularism?

These questions led to Jon’s Grace, Truth and the Common Good the Future of Christian Social Actionlecture in 2024, commissioned by Together for the Common Good, and a further report written jointly by him and Jenny, published in 2025.

This three-fold framework was still essentially a hypothesis. Were these really the right questions? Did people working in Christian social action recognise them? And was there any appetite to do something about them?

That is where I came in. I joined Jon and Jenny in 2025, when it became clear there was interest across the sector to take this further. Together we named this work “Crossroads” and resolved to test the feasibility of further development. Up to this point we were all devoting our time to this project on a pro bono basis. In January 2026 a Trust generously agreed to fund a four-month feasibility study which I then led as a freelance consultant.

Between March and July this year, I spoke with leaders from across Christian social action and church-based charity. The study eventually involved 73 practitioners, charity leaders, funders, theologians and senior church leaders, from Catholic, Anglican, Methodist, Baptist, Salvation Army and Evangelical traditions. It has been a real privilege to meet such inspiring and dedicated people.

I was determined to test the extent to which the three-fold framework resonated – and to gauge the feasibility of something that could genuinely help Christian social action respond appropriately in the new era.

We weren’t interested in simply finding people who agreed with the proposition. We needed people to test the thinking, challenge it and deepen it. They did. Some were keen to emphasise the enormous value of existing Christian social action and cautioned against language that might diminish what is already being achieved. Look at the millions of people helped, they argued. Imagine how much worse things might be without it.

As one participant put it: “Don’t dismiss charity: it is love in action.”

The conversations also helped us sharpen the language we were using around dependency and empowerment. A Christian understanding of the person is relational: we need one another. What emerged clearly through the study was the importance of interdependence – relationships in which everyone is recognised as having gifts to offer as well as needs to be met.

That resonated with something I’ve seen in Armley, Leeds. A man I’ll call Mick first came to us through the food pantry and warm space. Over time he became part of the community and was eventually confirmed at church.

But I’ve noticed how easy it is, even with the best intentions, to keep seeing someone like Mick primarily as a person to be served. When he’s asked to help instead – putting out chairs or doing the washing up – his face lights up. He isn’t simply receiving. He’s contributing too.

That small distinction gets to the heart of what we mean by interdependence. Christian social action should not divide people neatly into those who give and those who receive. We all have needs. We all have gifts. And we belong to one another.

The conversations also revealed different emphases. Frontline practitioners tended to place a stronger emphasis on justice, while senior leaders and funders were often more concerned about maintaining Christian distinctiveness.

Justice itself proved particularly challenging to talk about. Christians running a soup kitchen may well ask why people need the soup kitchen in the first place. But what do they do with the answer? How does a Christian organisation speak about structural injustice without simply becoming aligned with a political tribe?

These were not easy questions, nor did everyone answer them in the same way. But that was part of what made the process valuable. People from very different Christian traditions and different parts of the social action sector were able to wrestle with the same questions together.

A framework we can build on

Throughout those conversations, something important became clear. The three questions held up.

There was strong support for the framework. Perhaps most importantly, the framework created space for people with very different theological traditions, experiences and instincts to wrestle with shared questions. That feels significant to me.

Christian social action does not need another initiative telling people what they are doing wrong. What we heard instead was an appetite to learn from one another: to bring together charity and justice, compassion and empowerment, social action and faith, without pretending the tensions between them are easy to resolve.

As the conversations continued, they pointed towards an even deeper question that is becoming increasingly pressing in these uncertain times. What is the Christian vision of human flourishing?

The sector talks a great deal about tackling poverty, meeting need and delivering services. All of these matter. But what is the Christian vision of the person we are serving?

If every person is made in the image of God, surely our ambition cannot end with helping someone survive a crisis. It must also be about dignity and purpose, decent work, meaningful relationships, discovering and using our gifts, and having something to contribute to the lives of others.

One participant put the challenge even more simply: “What is the good news for the poor?” His question has stayed with me.

We don’t have to start from scratch

One of the most encouraging things about the research was surfacing how much good practice already exists.

Across the country, there are encouraging examples of Christians already beginning to find ways to move beyond simply delivering services. Food pantries offering more participatory alternatives to transactional models of food aid. Relational church-based investment models helping people move out of homelessness. Employment programmes helping people find work and recognise the gifts they have to offer. Community enterprises creating opportunities for people to contribute rather than simply receive.

There are people already making the shift to address the disconnects we’ve identified. What we did not find was an initiative intentionally holding all three dimensions together: justice, empowerment and Christian distinctiveness – and doing so across Christian traditions. That is where we believe Crossroads can help.

Not by creating another organisation competing for territory. Not by suggesting that good work isn’t already happening. But by connecting people, learning from what already works, recovering the theological foundations of Christian social action and creating space to work through the difficult questions together.

Where next?

The feasibility study has given us confidence to continue.

We are proposing a long-term programme to encourage a cultural shift in Christian social action, beginning with a two-year foundation phase. If funded, we will tell the stories of approaches that are already working, deepen the theological foundations, share good practice, work with funders and create communities of practice in which people can learn from one another.

We began with three deliberately provocative questions. Seventy-three conversations later, we have something stronger. We have a framework that has been tested, challenged and refined. We have found practical examples showing that different ways of working are possible. And we have found a broad appetite among Christians from very different traditions to continue this work together.

For me, this comes back to what I see in Armley. The food bank matters. The warm space matters. Being there for someone in crisis matters. We should never diminish the extraordinary generosity and commitment of Christians who do these things week after week. But perhaps we are being called to ask what comes next.

How do we respond to immediate need while also asking why that need exists? How do we recognise people not simply for what they need, but for what they can give? And how do we ensure that our response remains recognisably Christian – one that builds genuine solidarity, and that is rooted in a vision of the dignity, relationships and flourishing for which every person was made?

Jeremiah’s words have accompanied this work from the beginning:

“Stand at the crossroads and look; ask for the ancient paths, ask where the good way is, and walk in it.”

We are at the crossroads. The task now is to discern the good way and walk it together.

Rachel Arnold is Co-Founder, Crossroads Initiative alongside Jon Kuhrt and Jenny Sinclair.

We invite you to download the report via the button above. Comments are welcome and should be sent to annette@togetherforthecommongood.co.uk

Jon, Jenny, Rachel and Annette are all devoting time to this pro bono until funding is secured.