When the community makes a request - respond!

Occasionally the community makes it ‘easy’ for the church, by coming to the church with a request. Then the question is: how does the church respond?

This happened to a church in the north of Ireland. David Evans has been leader of the Church of the Nazarene in Desertmartin, County Londonderry, for 10 years.

David explains: We are a small country church with a worshipping congregation of about 90 adults and children on a Sunday morning. The local residents’ association approached us and asked if they could hold their meetings in our church hall. We agreed on the condition that we could participate in the meeting and bring a spiritual dimension to their proceedings. They readily agreed.

Our involvement in this meeting has begun to draw us into the centre of the local community. Recently the residents’ association expressed the desire to see a five-a-side league started for local young people. I was able to point them in the direction of a member of the church who wanted to organise just such an initiative from the church.

Again, we said we would want to include a spiritual element to such a meeting, and the association again agreed. They advertised the project for us - and before we knew it we had people contacting us from all over the area offering a team to join our league.

This relationship is proving very fruitful and we are now running a fitness evening and have been asked to organise the St. Patrick’s Day celebration 2008. The residents’ association had been given a grant of £350 by the local authority to be spent on either advertising the event or hire of a hall. They said that since we were willing to host and organise the event the money was ours.

We are now talking about how we as church can respond to the expressed need for a drugs awareness and education course. We are looking into the possibility of suggesting Care for the Family’s How to Drug Proof your Kids course.

All of this has been very encouraging to our little country church. It is really exciting when community groups want to build a relationship with the church and recognise that it has a part to play and something unique to offer to the community, both practically and spiritually.

Last Updated 21 October 2008