Shrewsbury Food Bank

For more than a decade the food bank at our Church has given out thousands and thousands of pounds of food to local people disadvantaged through all sorts of different circumstances.

Starting out primarily as a debt relief project the ethos has morphed to include crisis help, especially for people who are caught before their benefits starts to kick in.

All kinds of agencies refer people to us, and we give them enough food for a week.

As food has got more expensive so the food parcels have got more expensive and yet the work still grows, and in this economic climate we can only see it continuing in one direction. 20-30 people a week get around £30 of groceries.

For years it was called "Basics bank" but now we have changed the name to make it easier for people to find and understand what it is.

www.shrewsburyfoodbank.org

A couple of years ago the guy who set it up won a "Pride of Shropshire" award from the local newspaper / council for services to the community.

There is a big bin at the back of our main hall and people bring donations of food every Sunday. We receive all sorts of stuff from Harvest Festivals at other Churches. We go to supermarkets and ask for donations.

"For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat" jumps out of my Bible and this project gives me a way to live it out.

Why blog?

This much discussed subject came up at dinner with friends last night when I was asked the same question.

The underlying concern was that it appeals to our vanity and sense of worth trying to gain following.

This was not an accusation against me, but rather a general comment.

And the more I think about it, the more I kind of agree.

When I started this blog I wanted it to be me making an honest assessment of my own journey in Church leadership.

In it I have tried to be real about some of the more personal elements of my life, while also celebrating the great things God is doing in and through our Church.

I don't want to use this as a medium to throw stones at others, as some bloggers sadly do.

Nor do I want it to be a one sided propaganda tool for either my own ministry, my Church or my movement of Churches.

"Hey, everything is amazing and we are brilliant" is never the whole story.

I want it to be real.

And then for times I don't write much, because I don't really have anything to say.

Then at other times I may have a specific subject or situation I am working through.

The more I read other people the more I think people are either just trying to provoke a reaction or gain traffic. I don't want to fall into that trap.

We had 389 bums on seats across our two services on Sunday. I don't know them all. Not properly. I could give you the names of every one of our 275 adult members, but not necessarily all their children. Nor do they know me.

My friends know me. The people I work closely with know me. My midweek group know me. But as the Church grows and new people join I find my blog is actually a useful way to allow people to get inside my head and see the kinds of things I think about and stand for. New people regularly view it as they research our Church, and it does not seem to put them off, in fact they feel they know me better because they have found out more about my life and personality than they could do in normal circumstances.

So all in all, I am confident in what I am doing writing this, and ever more confident in why I don't write more.

Gift Day

God has been speaking to our Church recently about gearing up for growth.

We need to do something about facilities because we are pretty well full at our current site.

So in order for us to explore our options we are opening a Building Development Fund.

We have no plans yet.

We have no building we want to buy.

We have not decided to alter our current premises to fit more people in.

We just know we have to do something.

So we called a gift day.

You don't take gift days just before Christmas.

You don't ask people to give if you have not got a clear vision of what they are giving to.

Well we don't know what it will be for and we did it last week: so to hear our Church have generously given £47,916 (with more pledged) was really exciting.

It also means we can give 10% away as we always do, shared this time between our family of Churches, a national debt advice charity, our local Youth for Christ Centre and a recently launched Street Pastors initiative.

International & national mission, national social action, local mission, local social action.

And we now have a fighting fund to start exploring the next practical steps in our journey as a Church.

Not blogging as much

With a 4 month old daughter, an amazing Church and a few hobbies I have not been blogging much recently.

Which I guess the bishop of Shrewsbury would approve of?

I was at the launch of our Street Pastors initiative and the Bishop Mark Rylands made these remarks...

"More words have been used since the years 2000 than all history before. This is because of the vast overload of information, fuelled by the internet, and people churn out more and more and more.

We are too busy writing blogs and uploading things to websites that we don't have time to listen.

We have less time to actually do things.

And because of that our words have become devalued.

God sent His one and only Son to live with us. He did not send a memo!"

Cage Football in Shrewsbury

We have just launched our Cage Football project in Shrewsbury.

A couple of weeks back we had it in use at our half term fun day.

On Saturday we took it out to a local village where a couple from the Church run a youth club.

Next week the NOMAD team from YFC are coming to help us do a big launch; in 4 schools and 4 youth clubs (3 Church, one council) and then at Shrewsbury Town's stadium before the afternoon match.

All in all, it is a really exciting opportunity to go and be involved in our local community, by giving the local young people a fun, free activity, and dovetail in with the work already being done by a variety of community agencies.