How can your church tackle the problems caused by poverty and injustice in your local community? Steve Melluish shares his experience of trialling some exciting new training DVDs for churches that want to take action
One of the great challenges facing any church leader is how to get the congregation to engage with the real needs in the local community. How do we reconcile our patterns of worship and discipleship with needs we see around us? How do we encourage church members to serve those around them in a way that uses their skills and time well?
The media constantly reminds us of the many examples of poverty and injustice overseas, but the reality is that there are real demands in our own communities, right on our doorstep. Sometimes these are obvious: people homeless on the streets or issues with gangs, drugs and alcohol. Other times the poverty is less obvious: domestic violence, debt, prostitution and refugees. These are often the hidden challenges in our communities. They are present almost everywhere, in market towns and rural areas as well as in the inner city. So how we do respond?
The need and the response
Our context at St Michael’s is south west London, with the usual mix of high-rise estates and overpriced housing. Gang culture and city commuters live close together, in independent bubbles. The question was: how could we get these two communities to connect with each other? The answer for us was in developing mentoring teams that engage with the local youth. Many of us were already involved as mentors in some way at our places of work, as managers and team leaders, that it seemed that this skill set could naturally transfer to our local community. Our next questions were how do we provide the right training and find the connecting place?
A new resource
In recent years there has been a wealth of new resources for small groups but little if anything available on the subject of how to engage with tough issues in our communities, how to mentor young people at risk, provide hospitality for the marginalised, help people escape from homelessness or prostitution, or care for refugees and asylum seekers. Together with an organisation called Catalyst Trust - who provide coaching, mentoring and training to help people engage in urban mission - St Michael’s has helped develop a new resource for groups and individuals who want to know how to make a difference and engage as a church. Love is a Verb is a learning resource to inspire and equip Christians to put their faith into action in tough places.
The material highlights three key priorities for God’s people in responding to people effected by poverty and injustice, and explores different ways of putting them into action:
- Making Room – letting people experience the extravagant welcome of God
- Freeing Captives – helping people to find freedom from the things that hold them captive
- Seeking Justice – working to challenge and change the injustices that oppress people
Trained by experts
The Love is a Verb DVDs combine input from experienced practitioners, practical exercises and discussion, some issues for reflection and inspiring examples of people already engaged in their communities. The session ‘Concrete Faith: Incarnational Living’ is presented by Matt Wilson, who helped start up The Message Trust Eden Project in Manchester, where teams of people move into and live in tough inner city estates. The session ‘Making Room: Rediscovering Hospitality’ is presented by Fran Beckett, who headed up the Shaftesbury Society (providing services for disabled people, specialist education for children and young adults and support for those affected by deprivation), more recently the Church Urban Fund (supporting social action in deprived areas of England), and now runs an inner city church in south east London. Another session is ‘COACH Community Mentoring’ with Toby Baxter, Director of Community Development at Catalyst Trust. He has 16 years’ experience of community development and social work with high-risk youth, and has mobilised over 300 mentors and coaches.
The connecting place
For our mentoring teams at St Michael’s we used the COACH resources to great effect. The material enabled us to provide what was effectively professional training, inspire confidence and enable the mentors to have conversations with young people and families that help transform lives. Hand in hand with the training that this resource provided, we approached some of our local comprehensive schools. One school in particular was keen to partner with us. They take many vulnerable and challenging young people from some of the most difficult estates in south London, with a huge multicultural mix (there are over 100 different languages spoken). The school is well known for its excellent pastoral care. Together we have developed a mentoring scheme which enables us to meet one-on-one with some of the young pupils who are struggling to engage with school and life in general.
For an hour every fortnight we are able to take time out to connect with and help these teenagers start to explore their goals, and over time to help them work towards them. The commitment is easy. The school enables us to meet either early in the morning at the start of school in time for commuters to get off to work, or throughout the day. As for the young people, having an adult who wants to spend quality time with them can be life changing. ‘This is the only place where I can be myself’, was the feedback recently from one pupil.
As a church we are now managing to connect with real need in our community in a useful way. The Love is a Verb resources have helped us respond to the biblical challenge: ‘Learn to do right! Seek justice, encourage the oppressed. Defend the cause of the fatherless, plead the case of the widow’ (Isa 1:17).
