Bringing God's grace and healing love
to people with life-disrupting problems

The Place of Faith

Introduction

We often describe Crisis Centre Ministries as a Christian organisation. People are sometimes not sure what we mean by this, and how it works out in practice. This is the page where we attempt to answer those questions.

What it Means

We seek to operate according to the principles taught and demonstrated by Jesus of Nazareth. He taught that we should love God and love the people around us, and that is what we try to do.

We believe that God cares for the weak, the poor and the outcast - so the Church must be involved in caring for such people. Our practical work is an expression of our Christian faith, just as much as our prayers and worship are.

We do not believe that only Christians can help the homeless, drug addicts, or the other people we serve. But we do believe that Christians have a certain insight into the needs people have and the resources they can draw upon. This enables us to make an important and distinctive contribution as we seek to serve the homeless and vulnerable people of Bristol.

How it Works Out
...for our Clients

Our clients receive a better service from us because we are clearly operating as a Christian organisation than they would if we tried to function within the traditional agnostic model of care. There are two main reasons for this: firstly, we can maintain a clearly understood, consistent and helpful ethos; and secondly, our volunteers (who volunteer with us because we are a Christian organisation) enable us to deliver a very cost-effective and personal service.

We offer help to anyone who walks through our door, to anyone who is homeless or begging on the streets of Bristol. We generally don't know what our clients believe, and when we do, it doesn't affect what we will do for them.

In seeking to help our clients, we work with many other people and organisations. Most of these are not Christian, and they may believe and practice things we disagree with or disaprove of. What matters is not our feelings about the organisation, but whether they are best placed to help our client.

We adopt a person-centred approach: we listen to each individual, and try to find out what they would like to see happen. If someone wants help with food, housing or a drug problem, that is what we try to provide; if they want to talk to us, we listen; if they want to talk about something, we try to do so in a helpful way. The main difference is that we don't exclude spiritual issues from the list of things we will talk about with our clients.

Most of our clients know we are a Christian organisation, and sometimes they come to us because of that. They often face spiritual problems, and come to us because they know we will take these issues seriously. We don't have all the answers, but we can be there for our clients as they face spiritual problems, just as we are there for them as they face physical, emotional, legal and psychological problems.

We do not force our beliefs onto anyone; but when people ask what we believe, we are happy to talk about our faith with them. It is all part of being person-centred, and responding to each individual's needs and priorities.

We believe that God is the source of all good things, and that people can experience His love in many different ways. We believe we are making God known to people in all we do - in feeding the hungry, in helping the homeless find somewhere to live, in helping the addict discover freedom, and in helping people move forward in their spiritual journey.

Many of those who make the greatest progress in our experience are those who have responded in some significant way to God. People have a number of ideas why this might be.

For many people, knowing that you are loved and accepted for who you are is a life-transforming experience.
Belonging to a Christian community is vitally important for many people, for a number of reasons.
Christian morality and disciplines provide a helpful framework for living, and a protection from many of the difficulties our clients repeatedly get themselves into.
Christian truth can help people gain an understanding of themselves, of other people, of the world they live in, and of their place in the wider scheme of things. It can help them gain and retain a sense of perspective about their experiences.
Christians believe that the Holy Spirit works within all believers, to guide, guard and empower them. This sets us free from the dangerous self-sufficiency our society encourages people to believe in. We know that we are not big enough or strong enough or wise enough to make it without God's help; but we also believe that when we ask, He gives us that help.

It seems to us that all these things are likely to be true, and there is no point is trying to work out which factors are more important than others. It's likely to vary from person to person, anyway.

...for our Staff and Volunteers

In general, we expect all our staff and volunteers to be active Christians. If there is any doubt, we have a leaflet that describes what we mean by this, and which contains the statement of faith (the list of key beliefs) we ask all staff and volunteers to affirm.

However, we are both flexible and pragmatic in this area, as evidenced by the way we work alongside many organisations that do not share our faith. We ask that our staff and volunteers are Christians not as a matter of principle, but because it works better for our clients that way.

Because our clients are free to talk about spiritual matters, we need to be sure our responses in this area are helpful to the clients. It would not help us serve our clients if every time a question of faith or religion was raised, the staff or volunteers ended up arguing about the 'right' answer between themselves.

We have no objection to people from other religions setting up a similar ministry to help our clients - in fact, we would welcome it, and would help in any way we could. We do not want to prevent anyone from getting involved in helping the homeless people of Bristol.

The level of Christian faith we look for varies according to the degree to which it affects the job being done. In general, the more client contact is involved, the clearer we ask people to be in their faith.

The staff, trustees and other volunteers who work with the clients or take a degree of responsibility for some aspect of the ministry need to be active Christians, as they will be helping people with spiritual issues and representing CCM to Christian churches and other groups.
Volunteers who work behind the scenes (such as in the office) may, depending on their role, have a less active Christian faith, or even no Christian faith. As a minimum, they must be sympathetic to the Christian faith, and be willing to work in and for a Christian organisation.
Contractors and other people who come in to do a specific job (such as mending a broken pipe, or installing a piece of software) need have no Christian faith at all, and may not even be aware that we are a Christian organisation: it simply has no bearing on the work they do for us.

...for our Funders

We make it clear in all our publicity that we are a Christian organisation, and (as appropriate) describe the principles outlined above.

Many of the people who support us financially do so because we are a Christian organisation, and seek to integrate our faith and practical work into a consistent, holistic approach.

Some people support us because, as a Christian organisation, we have access to volunteers, financial and practical help from the Christian community, and this help would otherwise not be directed to addressing the social ills we encounter in our work.