ABSTRACT
CAFOD – the Catholic Agency for Overseas Development – provided the ARCS research with an opportunity to reflect on church and Christian mission with a uniquely placed practitioner group. A mandated agency of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of England and Wales, CAFOD is, at the same time, a charity and development agency in receipt of government funds. Among its employees are Catholics, and Christians of other traditions, as well as people of other faiths and none. It presents learning, which is ecclesiologically interesting as both formally related to organisational church life, whilst working thoroughly ‘in the world’ with day-to-day lay leadership (4). Within this context, particular learning around how a normative tradition might be fully appropriate (1) was key and contributed much to the emerging disclosed ecclesiology of ARCS. At the same time, the process raised questions for CAFOD as an organisation itself concerning agency and the complex power dynamics within which many of those who participated worked (3). A key learning, which became more developed through the continuing theological action research work of one of the CAFOD team, focuses on the pedagogical nature of the theological action research process itself (2).
