News Archive
Coffee Mornings in Gilesgate
Sarah and Catherine describe the Interns' recent adventures in Gilesgate.
As part of the NE1 project last summer, many young people from the church tidied up elderly people’s gardens in the NcNally place area of Gilesgate. We decided to follow up the contacts that were made last summer by putting on a Christmas coffee morning. Most of the elderly people in that area are living on their own in very basic accommodation, and a lot of kids hang around on the streets and intimidate the residents by banging on doors late at night etc. We really felt we wanted to do something for these people who otherwise wouldn’t be able to go out.
So we put on a Christmas Coffee Morning (complete with yule log yum!) in the small community hall in that area. It was brill! When it got to the morning it was frosty and cold and I have to say I wasn’t that optimistic about the turn out. However, God surprised us all as there were 8 people who came, just enough to nicely fill the room we were in. We collected people who wanted to come but were unable to walk to the centre, and it was great to see them renew contact with friends they hadn’t seen in a while.
One thing that really struck me was the 'one body many parts' thing. It was brill to see how given a common goal everyone worked together, taking the initiative and doing different tasks to achieve the same purpose- whether it was making tea, nattering to the people who came along, different people warming mince pies in the oven, washing up and cleaning.
The people who came were so grateful to us for putting it on. There used to be regular coffee mornings in that area but they stopped recently due to lack of support. It was great to talk to some people about Kings as well. One man even got a tear in his eye when we said that there are over 200 people at Kings every week because he said he hadn’t seen a church that full for years. They seemed amazed that young people like us were so involved in church.
Following on from the success of this first frosty Friday, McNally coffee mornings have become a monthly occurrence. We’ve also started another monthly coffee morning, in a different small community centre (Getting permission from the council was miraculously easy: isn’t God great!).
Building on the contacts we had, we’ve had the chance to get to know people a bit better, and every chance we have to meet them is a chance to build friendship, community and show Gods love in action in Gilesgate. Some of the people we’ve talked to have been incredibly enthusiastic about doing more in the community, bringing people together.
In a strange kind of way, we’re also beginning to see how God is using these coffee mornings as a platform for some local Christians to explain why we’re doing this for free, encouraging them in their witness to their neighbours. Its fab to see how God can bring things together for his glory!
As we look forward to the next few months, we’re hoping for more people to come along, for trust and friendship to be established between the residents themselves and between the Christians and other residents in the area. We’d love to see enthusiasm in building community, and ultimately that God would be glorified in what happens. We’re kind of finding out how this works as we go along, so please pray for the coffee mornings, nothing would happen without a base of prayer! Come on!!