Abi Jarvis
Abi Jarvis is the public leadership co-ordinator at the Evangelical Alliance, seeking to equip Christians with the skills and confidence to be faithful leaders in the places where God has called them. She has responsibility for the SENT course and the Public Leader: England curriculum.
Abi has a BA in Ancient History, an MSc in Political Communication and is currently studying for an MA in Kingdom Theology at WTC. She enjoys going to the theatre, watches too many American TV dramas, and somehow became responsible for daily office exercises despite her hatred of all things sporty. Much to her dismay, Abi ticks the box for pretty much every stereotypical feature of a PK – a pastor's kid.
We need public leaders now more than ever before
27 March 2020Despite having watched the spread through China and into Europe and beyond, I and I think many others, were not fully prepared for how fast it was going to change our lives. Events and responses are shifting so quickly that advice and resources constantly need updating and were I to give you ‘five top tips for leading during coronavirus’ I’d need to write five different ones after lunch. This is a time of crisis that will have significant repercussions for many people, in loss of life,…
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Shoulder to shoulder in the storm
20 February 2020With heavy rainfall predicted over the next few days, these figures will probably be even higher by the time you read this. In the UK, churches are often amongst the first to open their doors to disaster-hit communities. On Monday, Herefordshire Council tweeted that the vicar of St Martin’s Church had welcomed in anyone in need of refreshments, as had Hereford FC and other local community venues. I’m fairly unaffected by the storms here in London, but I’ve been watching the devastating photos…
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The Christian behind the movie
23 January 2020Multiple generations grew up watching Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood and learning from his teaching. "I got into television because I hated it so," Rogers said in 2000. Rather than simply complaining, he pursued the more difficult path of trying to transform TV. "I thought ... there's some way of using this fabulous instrument to be of nurture to those who would watch and listen." Rogers described the “producers and purveyors” of mass media as “servants of this nation” and chose to become one of…
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Film review: A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood
23 January 2020Loosely inspired by an article about Rogers from 1998 by journalist Tom Junod, this is a story about dealing with a legacy of childhood trauma – a moral tale that would be at home on Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood itself. Stories and lines from the article are sprinkled throughout the film, though often in different situations from those described in the article. But while both Tom Hanks (as Fred Vogel) and Matthew Rhys (as Lloyd Vogel, loosely based on journalist Tom Junod) give admirable…
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Leadership in 2020
17 January 2020We’re so encouraged by what they told us – God is doing some amazing things through His people in the UK!
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What do you do when the hero of the story is also a villain?
5 December 2019Were he anyone else, Ford would have received praise, perhaps seen his face on the cover of the newspapers – maybe he would even have received a medal, and that would have been it. But it’s a little more difficult to know how to react to someone who confessed to murdering a 21-year-old woman with the mental age of 15, offering no motive for his actions. Angela Cox, the aunt of Ford’s victim Amanda Champion, has said “I don’t care what he’s done today, he’s a murderer.” Our media sometimes finds…
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Why we need experts
20 November 2019The church is on the other side of town and most of those on the walk knew very little about my area. What I considered to be common knowledge about the community’s demographics, crime rates and social issues were completely unknown to them. Their fresh perspectives caused me to consider in a new way the things I took for granted.I know what’s happening in my community because I am there, experiencing it, every day. We all have unique knowledge about what’s happening in our place right now…
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AI technology: missing the heart
3 October 2019The job interview check-list:Re-read your application.Research the organisation and team you’ll be joining.Consider what to wear.Think about how your language, tone and facial expressions will be analysed by artificial intelligence (AI) technology.Wait, what?As fantastical as it might sound, a number of companies, including consumer goods giant Unilever, are now using AI technology as part of their recruitment process. Applicants film the answers to a set of identical job questions and their…
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Public leadership: Leading in making Jesus known
2 September 2019I have long struggled with the way I hear many Christians refer to the concept of ‘servant leadership’. It seems to have been misunderstood as an advocation for a path of service only, to turn away from leadership roles and simply wait to be asked to do something instead. I think servant leadership is a call to have an attitude of service as a leader. At the heart of public leadership is the belief that Christians can utilise the power and authority they have in their workplaces and…
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Book review: Culture Making
21 August 2019Crouch argues that Christians have spent time and energy condemning, critiquing, copying and consuming culture, either in an effort to seem ‘relevant’ to the world, or in a failure to express any distinction from it. He suggests that “the only way to change culture is to create more of it… If culture is to change, it will be because some new tangible (or audible or visible or olfactory) thing is presented to a wide enough public that it begins to reshape their world.” The book is divided into…
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Leaders, you're not alone
25 July 2019A name you are likely less familiar with (unless you’re a space enthusiast) is Chris Kraft, the first flight director of NASA, who died two days after the anniversary. Kraft invented the planning and control processes for crewed space missions and set up Nasa's Mission Control operations to manage America's first manned space flight and the subsequent Apollo missions to the moon. In other words, he’s one of the people who made it possible for Aldrin and Armstrong to do what they did. Kraft…
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