Just People

How connected is your church with the needs in your community? Have you tried joining with other churches to serve the people around you? Jonathan Spencer encourages us to take the time to come up with a united response

We are never far from the different levels of need in our hurting world. Our attention is pulled in all directions. TV news, podcasts, tweets and blogs all either distract us from, or point us to, a vivid world view or a local perspective. Whether it antagonises or activates us, what motivates us will rely on how connected we are to the needs around us. It can often be easy for churches to emphasise the Bible over social action, or vice versa, but the Bible is clear that faith and action go hand in hand. The challenge it presents to all of us is to integrate faith with our actions and draw together different aspects of our church activity, rather than drive them apart.

Partnership and practice

Just People is a six-week interactive course developed by Community Mission, a partnership between the two charities Tearfund and Livability. The aim is to help Christians grapple with issues of poverty and social injustice, and consider how to develop a local response. A core component of the course is a Day of Action, where participants engage in a local activity to put their learning into practice. Bringing together down-to-earth theology, reflection, inspiration and experience with practical exercises, Just People helps groups to think about the big issues of justice, mercy and humility as described in Micah 6:8: ‘He has shown all you people what is good. And what does the LORD require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God’ (TNIV).

Discussion and direction

Paul Dundas, vicar of Christ Church, Lisburn, Northern Ireland, attended a Just People workshop last year. Aware of the needs in his community, he took the course back home and ran it with 30 from his and other churches. Paul says that people hugely benefited from the direction and the fellowship that the course gave them. ‘The biblical input and vision that Just People provides is inspiring. It leads to lots of fruitful discussion, increased understanding and a fuller appreciation of God’s word. People learnt that they need to listen to God and his word and also to the needs of their community.’

For their day of action, the Christ Church team got alongside a local hostel for homeless people, The Simon Community. Although the church previously supported the hostel with gifts of food at Harvest and Christmas, they had never been actively involved. They provided food for the residents and cleared out a room for a staff member to use. The team are looking to make regular food donations and some have offered their time to volunteer at the hostel. The group also called various organisations in the city, making links with community influencers, including the local councillor, to discover the wider needs in their neighbourhood. ‘It was hugely encouraging to see people getting fed with the vision of a church that serves its community’, says Paul. ‘It is about taking small ongoing steps to ensure that we implement God’s word in the community.’

Awareness and activity

For Wim Mauritz the just people came from the three churches in his neighbourhood. St Pauls Parish Church, Free Evangelical Church and United Reformed Church in Rusthall, Tunbridge Wells, pooled together around 25 people who participated in the course. ‘We found that the course helped us to have a better awareness of our community’, says Wim. ‘It provided a deeper understanding of God’s mission for us and our role as churches. As a group we really engaged with the material. At one session we invited the local community police officer to share her thoughts on the community and what role she saw we could take as a church. By sharing and reflecting on the subjects and issues the course really brought people together.’

The churches agreed that one day was too short for running the community activities and so took a full week. ‘We started with a coffee morning and an afternoon tea club and moved on to the common and the streets where the team cleared rubbish’, says Wim. ‘The council were very supportive.’ Other activities included baking cakes for older people at a care home, giving out fruit and vegetables and inviting people in the neighbourhood to a fair on the green with children’s activities and a fairtrade café. On the Sunday the team and the three churches invited the community to an open-air service on the green.

As you read this you may be thinking, ‘But I’m just one person!’, but mission is about motivating or mobilising others. It’s about local church meeting local need. At Tearfund we see this transforming the poorest communities in the many different countries in which we work. It’s not so much a question of whether the need is around the world or around the block, more a question of getting around to it. Paul and Wim point us to a few teams from a handful of churches. They’re just people with a vision for the church with its heart in the community. What about you?