ExtraECC Simon Machin ExtraECC Simon Machin

Episode 13: Peter Owen Jones

The Reverend Peter Owen Jones is an Anglican priest, author, environmentalist and television presenter. Peter has had an extraordinarily varied and adventurous life as a jackaroo in Australia, a farm labourer in southern England, and then running a mobile disco, before working his way up from messenger boy to creative director in an advertising agency.

But then, a bit like Saint Anthony the Great or Saint Francis of Assisi, he abandoned a metropolitan lifestyle to become an Anglican priest, firstly in rural Cambridgeshire and now in the delightful East Sussex countryside at Firle, near Lewes. In fact, like St Anthony the Great, Peter - in his Extreme Pilgrim television series - lived in a cave for 21 days in the Egyptian desert.

Read More
ExtraECC Simon Machin ExtraECC Simon Machin

Episode 12: Jill Weber

Jill Weber and her husband Kirk helped found the Greater Ontario House of Prayer in Canada, and she served as its Abbess for 17 years. Jill is the Global Convenor of the Order of the Mustard Seed, a lay ecumenical religious order, and currently serves on the international leadership team of 24-7, their Director of Houses of Prayer. She and Kirk moved to England in 2018, and Jill is currently establishing a new residential monastic community at Waverley Abbey House in Surrey. A trained spiritual director, Jill published her memoir "a life lived from a place of loving encounter with God" in 2019. It is called Even the Sparrow.

Read More
ExtraECC Simon Machin ExtraECC Simon Machin

Episode 11: Peter Meadows

Few Christians have had as much influence upon the public presentation of Christianity in The United Kingdom over the last fifty years, often from behind the scenes, as Peter Meadows. An expert in communications, Peter Meadows brought his knowledge of printing techniques in the 1960s to help Musical Gospel Outreach develop into Buzz magazine, leading to a quiet revolution in the music deemed acceptable in the British churches and modernising its youth culture. Later in the decade, he helped a newly-formed NGO find its marketing pitch and name as Tearfund. Since then he has found "creative solutions to complex problems” in the development of Spring Harvest and in the political campaigning that paved the way for Premier Christian Radio. At the time of the interview in December 2020, Peter was Director of AfterWorkNet, which has been set up to help retirees make the most of the opportunities which lie ahead.

Read More
ExtraECC Simon Machin ExtraECC Simon Machin

Episode 06: Ben Pink Dandelion

Professor ‘Ben’ Pink Dandelion is a Quaker historian, academic and writer. He has worked for Woodbrooke Quaker Study Centre since 1992 and founded the Centre for Postgraduate Quaker Studies in 1999, now the Centre for Research in Quaker Studies. He directs its work with the University of Birmingham and Lancaster University. Ben has published extensively on the sociology, history and theology of British Quakerism, also on the spirituality of travel. The Cultivation of Conformity Towards a General Theory of Internal Secularisation was published in 2019.

Read More

Subscribe to our newsletter.

Sign up with your email address to receive updates on latest interviews and news.