First, scratch the surface

Written by Richard Hardy

Richard Hardy looks at engaging with people where they feel comfortable.

In the last church I led before going to work for Care for the Family, we held an annual fun day for the community. Everything was free – from the barbeque and ice cream to the games and bouncy castles.

The first year, the event drew 125; the second 500, and in the years after that, 800.

One year, a young woman dressed in leather with spiky white hair and abundant piercings was glancing around furtively. My wife, Rosemary, went to sit next to her. The young woman - Tina - whispered, “Have you seen him?”

“Who?” asked Rosemary, innocently.

“The vicar”, came the reply. “I hate vicars!”

As casually as she could, Rosemary answered, “Oh, he’s around somewhere - but you don’t need to worry about him. He’s harmless.”

As the conversation continued, Tina told Rosemary that she and her three children had been coming to the fun day for the past three years and that it was ‘a Godsend’ for them all. Her home situation was extremely tough and they had little money.

Rosemary kept in touch with her after the fun day, and she ended up living with us for three months whilst she sorted things out.

In holding the fun day, we had begun to engage with people where they were, at a level that they could relate to. Because thinking about meeting the needs of the community can mean meeting people’s need for entertainment, for leisure activity.

To engage effectively with our communities we need to start with the surface. We need to start where people feel comfortable to relate to us. Would you want to tell a perfect stranger your deepest needs, right off, the first time you met?

If we are to engage then we have to build trust. Our neighbours need to know that we are like them, we enjoy the kind of things that they enjoy, and lay on activities that they are going to want to attend.

For us as a church this opened the flood gates and over the next few years we started a music festival, pamper nights, a shopkeepers’ thankyou dinner, and many other things besides.

Of course, once you’ve made that connection through entertainment, you can’t assume that the next step is to invite them to Alpha or to church. It’s too soon, and it undermines the process of building relationships. I wanted my community to know that when they came to a fun event they wouldn’t get anything that they weren’t expecting; they’d simply have a good time.

What we found was that as people connected with us in this way, they became much more willing to share their real needs. Some do it quickly within minutes of engagement - they tend to be the desperate ones. But with most, it takes time to build trust – and some may never wish to confide at all.

We lived in a reasonably middle class neighbourhood where the problems were hidden behind net curtains. If you live in an area of deprivation, the real needs may be more obvious, but you still need to build trust if you are to connect with them. Most of the problems people are facing are all too common – they surround areas such as marriage, parenting, stepfamilies, single parenting, debt, employment or lack of employment.

If people are going to open up to talk about their real needs and difficulties, we need to win the right to be told. Tina, the single mum in my story, had been to three fun days - that was her only contact with us as a church - before she was willing to tell her story to a stranger.

And having talked about their real needs, people need to know two things: that you can keep the secret, and that you will help.

Tina started asking spiritual questions. Why are you doing this? Why are you so kind? Why, Why, Why?

We answered only what she was asking; we never pushed further than she was willing to go. And one day she started attending church, asked to go on Alpha and came to her own conclusions about the relevance of faith.

Last Updated 14 November 2008