Newsletter
May 2002
Bringing God's grace and healing love
to people with life-disrupting problems
We all share a desire - perhaps a need? - to make a difference. I talk with many people who feel that they don't make a significant difference, who are frustrated by their lack of impact. We want to change the world, or at least some small part of it, and struggle when this does not happen.
The sad thing is that many people do not appreciate the effect they have on others. I know it is trite to say that a kind word and smile can change someone's day, but it is also true. And when people encounter kindness and generosity when the best they hope for is indifference, it can do more than change their day - it can open up the door to far deeper changes.
I hope that through this newsletter, you can not only receive information and items to pray about, but you will also be able to share something of the joy we experience in seeing broken lives slowly mended. One of the ongoing difficulties of this work is that we cannot be too explicit about the steps people are able to take - it is not fair to the individuals concerned if we broadcast details of their personal lives. Even if we do not give names, the people involved can recognise themselves and feel that everyone knows who they are. So we are left with vague summaries that don't begin to do justice to the wonderful things God is doing: this person has been found somewhere to live, another has started going to church. For others, you can hear the difference in their prayers. Often, these appear to be just small details, but lives are made up of small details and God knows the amazing victories that each small detail represents.
To all of you who play a part in this ministry through your gifts and prayers: please accept my thanks, and be assured that what you are doing to support us is making a difference both to us and to the people whose lives we are seeing change.
Paul Hazelden,
General Manager
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The Council of Management of The Crisis Centre are the body which oversees the operation of the ministry and we are greatly indebted to those who have been serving in this way. At this time, we do want to thank Jill Thomas for the skills and commitment she has brought to this team. She is soon to be moving away from Bristol and therefore will no longer be able to be involved in this way. As well as her contribution to the Council of Management, Jill has regularly helped in our coffee shop and provided a mentoring service to members of our staff team.
We are looking for other people to join the Council of Management and be involved in the ministry in this way. Ideally, there are particular skills which we would like to include in this team: PR and fund-raising, training and employment, staff mentoring. As our supporters, we ask you please to:
- pray with us about this
- make contact with the office if you are interested in being involved in this way
- pass on our need to people who may be interested.
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Our thanks to David, one of our volunteers, for his amazing work in helping to organize us to accomplish the much needed redecoration of the coffee shop. Also to the many volunteers and clients who were involved in the preparation and painting over the bank holiday weekend. The shop looks really good - definitely worth a visit if you are in the area.
This redecoration is one stage in the maintenance work needed for the shop. We have a list of urgent and fairly urgent work including refurbishment of the kitchen, remedying the 'springy' floor in the seating area, installing a door from the shop to the offices for security reasons.
These are very practical needs which are essential to the service we are offering our clients and what would be really helpful to us would be the services of someone knowledgeable in the area of buildings, maintenance and DIY who could give us an hour or so per week or fortnight and advise on maintenance issues, help co-ordinate quotations and organise some of the basic aspects such as putting up shelves.
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(Sam is our Pastoral Care Co-ordinator)
"I became homeless for the first time in 1991, following a turbulent time at university where I was studying Occupational Therapy. My family did not understand what was happening and so did nothing to help me. I slept in my college laundry for 6 weeks until I discovered a shelter for young people and then moved in there.
I left university and had no money. The financial support that I had been receiving was withdrawn because I was no longer studying. My doctor signed me off work as unfit and I was prescribed tranquillizers. All I could find to do all day was to walk the streets. I began to drink in order to pass the time and deal with the cold, but the drink alongside taking tranquillizers caused me to 'black out' quite frequently. I started smoking large quantities of cannabis and marijuana as I found that it helped my mind to escape the pain that I was in. I mixed with people whose lives were as chaotic as my own and began to get into heavier drug addiction. I made money by stealing and dealing amphetamines which I became reliant upon. Over a period of time I became addicted to methadone and heroin.
In 1997, I detoxed and a friend began to talk to me about salvation. I invited the Lord Jesus into my life in August of that year and the change has been dramatic, not only as far as addiction is concerned but also aspects of my character have changed. God has strengthened me with joy and given me a real hope for the future.
Working here at the Crisis Centre is a God-given opportunity for me to encourage people who have lost their way in life. The grace of God is absolutely free and available to all and I want to be here to minister that to others.
Abundant Blessings,
Samantha Colgan"
(Sam's role as Pastoral Care Co-ordinator involves developing the ongoing support we offer to clients and encouraging the involvement of volunteers in this. She also heads up Bridgehead Church. Watch out for her articles about her work in future newsletters.)
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The next LITE Course starts on 1 July and prospective candidates will be interviewed during the last week in June. Andy Luxford, Project Leader for LITE, would greatly value your prayers regarding the preparation of this course, the staffing, and the students on it. He would like to see a really good group form - students and staff together: this is an essential foundation to the training we offer as well as being a significant part of the experience of the course.
We have seen people without hope gain very specific hope for their future as we explore with them the way forward: we also see people who have obvious potential but are not yet able to maintain commitment to the course and therefore not able to benefit as much as they might from the training and support we can offer. Andy is doing a valiant job holding together the potential of the course with the inconsistency of some of the students and at the same time training, encouraging and helping to develop those students who are attending.
Our way of responding to the difficulties our clients have in maintaining a level of consistency has been to introduce a modular approach and we plan to build on this by running module one on a continual basis so that clients can become involved at the point of their motivation. Having this level of facility demands intensive staffing and, alongside Andy and the volunteers who are involved with LITE, we will need to appoint an Assistant. As we look to developing the course in this way, we do again ask you to pray.
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It tends to be one particular person and their situation which highlights an issue, and it was a short time ago that I met up with one of our clients who was wandering around Broadmead in Bristol. As far as I understood, he was in a fairly good place in terms of choosing to change and finding ways of helping himself to stop using drugs and maintain that. He had recently moved into supportive accommodation specifically for people in his situation, and had also been making good use of the resources we provide at The Crisis Centre.
For him, though, looking after himself is by no means a simple process. He is now responsible for buying his food and preparing his own meals, as well as looking after himself generally. This is not something with which he is familiar and so at present he is buying 'fast food', running out of his money before his next giro and then not eating well - had I not been with him, he told me, he would have taken food from a rubbish bin and eaten that. He went on to talk about his days being empty, he could find nothing to do all day long and so was wandering around begging when I met him.
He wants to change and said he is prepared to put effort into trying to sort out his life - the difficulty was that he literally did not know how to do some of the things which were part of change for him. Changing from addiction to living life without drugs is a huge step: to have this accompanied by other major uncertainties begins to threaten his progress.
This situation is not uncommon with our clients, and is partly catered for through our LITE Course. As valuable and appropriate as that training is, there continue to be areas of client needs which are not being met by that resource or by the services presently provided in the coffee shop. For some time we have been considering what our response to that might be and you may remember that Derek Groves had been thinking of introducing specific activities such as woodwork as a way of responding to this situation. We do have a number of ideas, but at this stage would like to share with you the situation for your prayers.
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This is a celebration of the work of The Crisis Centre and the way lives are being transformed by the power of God. We want to offer an opportunity for you, and others who as yet have had no contact with us, to come and meet some of our clients, talk with the staff about their areas of work, and gain some first hand knowledge of what is happening here.
With the theme of transformation, the day will include testimonies from clients on how their lives are changing, the unveiling of a new name for the coffee shop (we have ideas for a name, but if you have suggestions we would love to hear from you), presentations of the various aspects of the ministry, live music - and light refreshments!
We would love to see you if you are able to come. Please contact the office for further information.
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As a result of the brilliant work of one of our volunteers, Steve, our mailing list has now been transferred to a new computer software package and we are taking the opportunity to update it. We'd appreciate your help with this. Please let us know:
- if the information on the envelope you received is incorrect
- if you are receiving too few/too many copies of our Newsletter
- if you would now prefer not to receive the Newsletter
Also, if you have an email address and would be happy to receive the Newsletter by email, then please let us have the relevant information if you have not already done so. If you have given us your email address, with this Newsletter you are likely to receive a hard copy as well as one by email - please bear with us as we fine-tune our system.
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This may be a bit of a dated concept, but I think it is still true. There does seem to be a connection between prayer and situations changing. It still surprises me, though perhaps it should not, that prayer opens doors which would not have opened otherwise, and that clients respond to our prayers for them when it is difficult (if not impossible) for them to respond to our direct verbal communication. Of course, this doesn't mean that prayer replaces action - but it really is not a good idea to have one without the other!
We would like to try to facilitate your prayers in a way which suits you. At present we provide prayer sheets to those who like to use this as a basis for their prayers, and we have recently started monthly Worship and Intercession meetings and they are being held on the fourth Tuesday of each month at 8 pm at City Road Baptist Church. On the days the coffee shop is open (Monday, Tuesday and Thursday) the staff meet in the shop at 10.30 am to pray and we would be very happy for people to join us for this.
If you would like further information on any of these, please contact the office. There may be other ways in which you are already praying and would like to include CCM in your prayers: if we can facilitate this in some way by perhaps providing information or providing someone to come and talk with you about the work, then we would be very happy to try to arrange this.
Trudie Lane, Administrator
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This is a training facility organised by Life for the World Trust, and Bristol Christian Action Network have invited them to bring this resource to Bristol. It will take place at Trinity Tabernacle on 13 June, costs £10 for the day and is a described as a 'training and envisioning day'. It is something which Crisis Centre Ministries strongly supports, and further information and booking details are available from Rev S.A. Abbott. Tel/Fax 0117 9779270, email stephen.abbott@withleigh.freeserve.co.uk.
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We are so grateful to you, as our supporters, for your generosity. As you know, we are financially dependent on donations and our daily existence is something of a miracle. Recently there have been a number of times when we have not had resources in the bank to cover outgoings, but at just the right time a donation has arrived. Our Treasurer can be heard saying how his faith is growing as he experiences God's provision, through you!
Thank you so much to those who support us regularly, some through standing orders, and help to provide the base which is significant to our forward planning. Thank you, too, to those who make occasional and one-off donations - sometimes it is your gift which arrives at just the right time. Quite a number are now Gift Aiding donations to us, with the obvious benefits that this brings. It is, at the same time, humbling and tremendously encouraging to be supported in this way.
We have a monthly salaries bill of £5,000 and this reflects the appointment of a minimum of paid staff, some of whom receive only the legal requirement of minimum wage. We believe it would be honouring to God to be in a position to pay our staff a salary which is commensurate with our value of them and the service they are providing. Alongside the salary bill are regular outgoings for services and maintenance indicating obvious demands on our resources before we begin to consider maintaining client contact and the various aspects of our work. To adequately run the ministry demands a significant income and our attention is continually drawn to the need for someone to give specific attention to public relations and fund raising. We are without doubt a faith ministry, and delighted to work with God and be reliant on him in all aspects and it is in working with him that we have identified this need. If this is something which you can help with, we would love to hear from you.
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Jayne, our catering co-ordinator says:
"Quite a few people are baking things for the coffee shop - cakes, crumbles, pies etc and other people bring in bread and other foods, and this is really helpful. If you would like to help in this way, then what we really need at present is:
Tea
Coffee
Sugar
Tinned meat
Tinned vegetables
Fresh vegetables would be extra-specially good
Sauces (red and brown)
Gravy granules
Salt, Pepper etc.
If you are interested in making meals, puddings, cakes etc for the coffee shop, then ring me on the office phone number and we can talk about what would be good"
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If you are interested in volunteering with Crisis Centre Ministries in any way, we would love to hear from you. Opportunities include:
helping on our training course
in administration
serving our customers
building relationships with our customers and offering help
with Bridgehead church
in outreach.
Further information is available from the office.
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