Conversations are at the heart of City to City

Those individuals in the group that gathered around William Wilberforce at the end of the eighteenth century all had different callings and gifts. They brought their vocation into their debates but the conversations they had also transported each of them out of their own area of expertise and gifting and into someone else’s sphere of influence or culture.

The model of the Clapham Sect is important to City to City. We are trying to bring people together so that this exchange can take place.

Why do we value conversation so much?

We don’t want to ‘just talk’, but conversation inspired by God and the Holy Spirit produces some incredible things. It sees possibility in small changes. It is founded on the belief that one person can influence an environment by being interactive, complementary, helping good things to grow rather than regress, and by encouraging signs of hope in society.

Conversations at City to City gatherings have proved to be powerful, fun, heated, challenging and, most of all, a release of encouragement, ideas and possibilities that can shape our journeys and stories as we engage with the different spheres we are called to be connected to.

We have seen conversations develop fruitfully when people start to take seriously the place (we call it the ‘cultural sphere’) they are in and their involvement in it. City to City aims to facilitate depth, to let conversations spread, and to foster initiators, gatherers and cross-pollinators. We believe that an artist needs a scientist, an educator needs a financier, and so on. Without these cross-overs it’s easy to get very narrow minded.