Members of Grimsby Neighbourhood Church outside Your Place, which is opposite the church building.,,,
“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.
SOWING
“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-judgemental 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’.”
From Direction Magazine issue 239
