Church sowing seeds of love in the community
Whether it’s providing a home or a community garden, Grimsby Elim is determined to reach out to its neighbours.
“Let’s turn around,” said senior minister Alun Taylor to the circle of people praying for each other at Grimsby Neighbourhood Church back in the early 90s.
“Let’s turn outwards and start praying for our community.”
At that moment, God birthed a deep desire in the church to love its deprived local area – a desire that has led it to change lives for the past three decades.
“We have restored buildings and land over the past 30 years, and more importantly we believe restoration is the heart of God for people’s lives,” says Sue Boyle, who took over from Alun as pastor six years ago.
This work began, she explains, just one week after the prayer meeting. Alun felt God telling him to buy a house. The church obeyed and bought a property nearby.
“We rented it out to people who would otherwise have been homeless. Since that time, we’ve purchased and refurbished four more properties and we rent them out to people in need,” says Sue.
Soon after the first house was bought, Alun’s wife Chris caught a vision to establish a centre in the community to meet the needs of people in the area.
“Alun asked me to do a survey to find out what local people wanted,” says Chris, who today heads up the church’s community work.
“Because there is a lot of deprivation, poor housing, unemployment, drugs and crime around here we weren’t short of suggestions.”
In response to the findings, the church rented a derelict shop, secured funding and refurbished it with the help of a community service team, transforming the building into its Your Place centre.
“We started by helping small numbers of hard-to-reach people and teaching them basic skills to give them confidence and job opportunities. A number of people turned their lives around through that,” Chris explains.
“Now, it’s a multifunctional building where people can gather and we run creative and health-promoting activities like quizzes, drop-ins, computer and cookery classes from Monday to Friday.”
Chris is quick to point out that these activities are not Your Place’s main purpose, however.
“One of the big lessons God taught us was we were not just to do things in the community. Instead, he wanted us to become a long-term part of the community and sow into their lives.
“Over the years Your Place has become a community itself where people who are marginalised or lonely can belong and thrive.”
God has miraculously provided funding, she adds, but rules prohibit charities which receive grants from sharing the gospel. As she struggled with this, God once again reminded her of Your Place’s purpose.
“I felt God say, ‘Just love the people’, she says.
Your Place, therefore, focuses on its mission statement – welcome, acceptance, support, help – to grow what Chris calls “the loving community arm of the church”.
“For some people, we are the only family they have. We have people with learning difficulties, mental health problems, addictions and who sleep rough.
We’ve built a non-judgmental culture among our staff and volunteers to care for them like a family,” she says.
This was highlighted one day when a man who was fairly new to Your Place turned to a lady who was nervous and withdrawn and said, ‘Don’t worry love, you’re safe here.’
Meanwhile, at the back of Your Place, a community garden – “Oasis” – is having a similar effect.
The garden sits on a former play area, once strewn with broken glass, needles, abandoned settees and old washing machines, and infested with rats.
As with the Your Place building, the derelict site has been transformed into a garden where locals can meet, talk and grow plants.
“What we’ve been able to do with the garden is like a prophetic word,” says Chris. “We’ve taken something that was horrible and made it into something beautiful. That’s what God can do in people’s lives.
“Our garden manager Ernie put it perfectly. He said, ‘We’re not just growing flowers here, we’re growing people’, and it’s true.
“A lady who is battling alcohol addiction told me recently, ‘When I walk through the gates of the garden I walk a few inches taller’.”
Now, a former play area beside the garden is being turned into a small garden centre where volunteers have recycled pallets and scaffolding boards into tables to display the plants they grow.
Besides providing a loving community, Your Place and the Oasis are also helping build bridges between local people, organisations and the church.
The police have called on Your Place for help to care for people, while social prescribing teams have begun referring people in need of extra support.
Locals have grown to know and trust Grimsby Neighbourhood Church more through what Chris and Sue describe as Your Place and the garden’s ‘sowing ministry’.
“It’s been incredible to see what’s happened over the years – God has provided everything we’ve needed to be self-sustaining, and lots of people come here to get help,” says Sue.
“We’re a very small church of just 25-30 people but God has called us to do big things for his kingdom.
We think of ourselves as a ‘Gideon Church’ – very small and feeling inadequate at times, but we’ve gone in the strength and enabling of God to achieve his plans and purposes in this area – proving it’s not our ability he wants, but our availability.”
A year of centenary celebrations
Grimsby Neighbourhood Church celebrated its centenary in May this year and to mark the occasion in style, it is organising a year of activities to bless its community.
“We’ve got various goals around our 100 theme,” says associate pastor Sue Boyle.
“We’re aiming to raise £100 a month to give to local businesses or charities which are struggling, especially after Covid.
A lady in the church did a 100-mile walk to raise money for five local charities too.”
Other 100-themed plans include inviting 100 people to church every month by putting church invites and tracts through doors in the neighbourhood, and praying for 100 minutes a month for God to impact the area.
“In our early days, God did incredible miracles and hundreds of people became Christians, so we’re praying he will once again visit our area with salvation and miracles.”
Plenty is planned for the months ahead too.
“When we go to Kenya in September we want to take 100 ties and 100 cotton bags to give away,” says Sue.
“And at Christmas, we want to give 100 gift bags to the homeless.
“Next Lent, we’re planning to do 100 acts of kindness and we also want to try to connect with people who used to come to the Elim Sunday School years ago.”
This article first appeared in the August 2022 edition of Direction Magazine. For further details please click here.
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