The New Springs City Church community shop is helping with food needs.,,,
From distributing food and adopting streets to blessing businesses and schools, New Springs City Church is passionate about sharing God’s love through community outreach. We spoke to pastor Nathan Weaver.
Our vision as a church is to love God, love people and make disciples, and it plays out through food and local outreach,” says Nathan Weaver.
The pastor of New Springs City Church in Sunderland is guiding Direction through the energetic mix of activities he has been organising during and since lockdown, and says opportunities pop up daily to support the local community.
“We’re encouraging the church to adopt local streets, bless businesses, support schools and love the people around us,” he says.
Much of the church’s outreach revolves around food. During lockdown, a deal with a local businessman led to 40 hot meals a week being given to families in need for six months, for example, while the church supplied 13,000 meals at the start of the pandemic for families to cook at home.
For the past couple of years, the church has also distributed Christmas hampers to provide families with much-needed meals.
“We worked with Child Services and groups around Sunderland and asked schools who was struggling.
“Through that, we gave 30 hampers out which were worth £65-£70 each with Christmas food that would feed a family for about two weeks.
“We also did a big Christmas giveaway where people could come to the church and choose from thousands of pounds worth of clothes, school uniforms and toys that local people and firms donated.”
NEW DIRECTION
At the start of lockdown, believing it would last just a month or so, Nathan had plans to extend the church’s drop-in cafe. But God nudged him in a different direction, he says.
“We were helping a lot of people with food and I felt the Lord speak to me about expanding this, so instead of growing the cafe we decided to set up a community shop.
“When I told the council what we were planning they said they’d love to give us some fridges and freezers, to pay for FareShare to bring food to us and to supply us with fresh fruit.” The shop opens on Thursdays for the community and Sundays for church members and is used by up to 70 families a week.
“We didn’t want it to be like a food bank where you have to be on benefits to use it. It’s open to anyone and if people are willing to come through the door and ask, we will help them,” Nathan says.
Beyond the food-based outreach, New Springs members are also encouraged to help their community by caring for streets, businesses and schools.
“I’ve been challenging people for a few years now to adopt their street – go down it, pick up rubbish, take cake to people and just try to be friends. Hopefully that will lead to meaningful conversations,” says Nathan.
“I also encourage the church to bless local businesses. I’m saying let’s buy in our area, let’s pray over businesses.”
The idea bore fruit during the pandemic, he says. New Springs was able to source donations through FareShare to give to six takeaways and mobile businesses.
“We gave them things like onions and tomato ketchup which helped them save £50 or £60 a week, and they were very grateful.”
The church has also chosen schools to pray for and bless, and treated 320 teachers in three schools to gifts at Christmas, including chocolate, Christian magazines and notes to thank them for everything they are doing.
Since lockdown ended, community outreach based in the church itself has begun to flourish again, with a mother and toddler group and kids’ club back in action and growing. “We now have 50 kids with their parents or grandparents coming to mums and toddlers.
“From that, we have people coming to Messy Church. We restarted that a few months ago and had 47 families at the first one. We’re pleasantly surprised at what God has been doing.”
From Direction Magazine issue 239
