The church of which i'm part has agreed to a contract offered by the local council to run emergency sheltered accommodation for rough sleepers through the winter. This means using our building, time, personnel and other resources dramatically differently from how we have been until now.
WWWWwwwwwooooooooooooooooooooooooo - Hhhhhhhhooooooooooooooooooooooo!
Exciting. Terrifying. Huge massive big deal. Only the beginning?
What's brilliant about this is:
How the move is seen and understood by the church as something truly 'gospel', something we can't as Christians deny or shirk.
The preparedness to address the wealth and complexity of 'how' questions in order to make it happen, rather than use the 'how' questions as reasons not to go ahead with it.
The fact that we will now have something of real substance around which to gather, theologise, worship and serve.
What's of concern, and worthy of further reflection is:
That it's taken an invitation from local government and financial payment for us to start doing this. If Jesus is our Lord, and not government or money, we ought to have been doing it already, or we need to exceed the terms of service agreed.
The potential for this work to continue but as a separate project from the church; rather than it be something the church does, it becoming something the church allows to happen so it can get on with its 'proper religious business'.
Other thoughts include:
My excitement over having large amounts of ministerial time taken up by night-time service to homeless people meaning that there could be a void of 'Sunday stuff' and pastoral stuff for the wider church to fill. I'm excited that this could force a fuller recognition of what 'community' means, ie. what it is to belong to one another and to take responsibility for one another, as well as for our religious practise. This has to be preferable to attitudes that look to be served and catered to.
The council has offered some of its resources from when it was running the scheme, things like camp beds, but most importantly two industrial washer dryers. The question of where we put these is a big one. Personally, i'd love them to go into the chapel space where they could also serve as an altar. Such an act could save us from any intentions of looking to continue to separate our 'holy spaces' from the nitty gritty of our work with 'the least' - like the two aren't radically intertwined!
Anyway, i'm sure you'll hear much more on this as it all continues to unfold. For now though, Wwwwwwwwooooooooooooooo - Hhhhhhhhhoooooooooooooooooooo!!!!!!
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4 comments:
Sounds really exciting. Hope you manage to get something to work. Agree with you about the concerns, and would add to that:
- it's important that the process of councils contracting services out to voluntary groups means that stuff that wouldn't otherwise get done does get done, and not just that another group is doing it. Otherwise it's both an excuse for the council to downsize and it prevents the voluntary group from doing the additional stuff it might otherwise be doing.
- how would being under contract affect your ability to speak with those you were ministering to about Christ?
I love the idea of using the dryers as an altar; that's inspired.
I'd also encourage you to get homeless and previously homeless people involved in running it (perhaps you're already doing that) so it's not just relatively well-off people providing charity to people they are otherwise distinct from.
Good luck, and will pray it evolves into something much bigger.
Sounds great. My old church for many years housed a night shelter run by a charity - clearly their local council not quite as enlightened as yours - and it was great. Eventually people had had enough of the attendant problems (like needles and vandalism) and it moved on, but at least now they are doing something else, with older people (and their attendant problems like....), so all is not lost.
Hope it is a really positive experience all round. Every blessing.
Read this (just out..)
Washer Dryer Altars? Spot on. Go for it. Apart from them not really being altars though eh?
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