When the Community Speaks - being inspired by those outside the church

Bloomfield Presbyterian Church in East Belfast is a great church with a great history. However, to some in the community, it might appear as a middle class church. Most families live outside the parish and travel by car to attend. On the side of the street where it is set the houses are large, detached and well to do. On the other side of the street starts an area of social deprivation.

Until recently the church’s impact on the opposite side of the street has been slight. The evangelism convenor Stephen McDonald had tried to encourage the church to engage with varying levels of success. When he heard that Care for the Family’s Engage Conference was coming to Belfast his first reaction was ‘Why bother?’.

But he changed his mind and decided to come. Stephen realised that the church had a limited understanding of community issues. He had been dropping in and developing a relationship with people in the Walkway Community Centre over the past two years. So he invited two non-church ladies from the local community to come. Bloomfield’s new Pastor also attended the Engage Conference and all four were inspired by the day.

“I came away thinking. How do you discover the needs in the community?” explained Stephen.

Stephen booked a slot at the end of morning service the following Sunday and invited the ladies from the community centre to come and tell the church what the needs were and challenge the church members to get involved.

“They pointed out the needs and asked, ‘when are you Christians going to come over and help us?’” By the end of the morning they had 50 members volunteer to take part.

Two months later, an opportunity arose for the church and Walkway Community Centre to develop a building owned by the Department of Regional Development. The building had been opened as a women’s education centre in 2000 but had closed by 2006. It then lay derelict for three years.

The Walkway Community Centre has been given the building on a peppercorn rent and invited Bloomfield church to help refurbish the building and use it to impact the local community. Teams from the church began to clear and redecorate the building. Gifts have come in to fund the redevelopment and to equip it.

They are now planning to open it as a community outreach centre known as CrossSection at the end of October 2009. The new centre will have a drop-in coffee bar, a Christians Against Poverty support office, two Homework Support Classes, a Detached Duty Office – out of which a team will venture on to the streets to build relationships with local teenagers, and a Befriending Ministry for the lonely and vulnerable. The community centres youth worker and the church’s youth leaders will work together.

“The remarkable thing about this is that in six months we have accomplished what has taken other churches years to get established. If that is not God’s intervention I don’t know what is,” says Stephen.

“The possibilities now seem endless, but even if it should go pear shaped and we have to give the building back, at the very least we have returned a building to the community that can actually be used.”

In the meantime, listening to the challenge and call for help from the community has enabled Bloomfield Presbyterian Church to engage in a truly transformational way.

Last Updated 24 November 2009