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

StreetWise - April 2008

Dear Friends

Everyone knows, you shouldn't judge a book by its cover. So, like Claire and Jewels later in this newsletter, I have a confession to make.

For several years, people have been telling me I simply have to read a book by Rob Bell with the unlikely title of 'Velvet Elvis'. So I bought it and... it sat on my book shelf.

The trouble was, it looked like it had been carefully designed. Do you know what I mean? There's text going sideways, and lots of 'plus' signs, and an odd typeface, and... you probably get the idea. And, in my experience, when people put a lot of thought into the design, they generally don't put enough thought into the content. So it sat on my shelf and looked well-designed.

You can guess what is coming, can't you? I eventually opened it up and discovered it's a wonderful book, and I would like to take up the whole newsletter just quoting from it. The questions and struggles Rob describes are our questions and struggles; the hopes and dreams are ours, too. He describes a Christian faith that is attractive, relevant and exciting - the sort of faith that I remember signing up for many years ago, and the sort of faith I can wholeheartedly encourage others to sign up for.

Rob talks about the way in which the gospel is good news, especially for those who don't believe it. Because that is what God is like: He wants the very best for us. He wants the very best for everyone - whether or not we are nice people, whether or not we believe in and follow Him.

Rob is absolutely brilliant when talking about the change that happens when we become Christians. We know the theory (we are 'a new creation'), but what does it mean in real life?

We are being re-made in the image of Christ. It is a process. We have to co-operate if the process is to work, but if we do cooperate, God is committed to make it work.

After thirty-six years, I'm still being re-made. It's a long process, and I'm not quite perfect yet. So it is no wonder that the alcoholics and drug addicts who we see coming to Christ are also still in the process of being re-made. They aren't perfect yet, either.

Let me encourage you: please don't make the same mistake I did. Buy the book and then read it! (Better still, buy it through the CCM web site so we get the commission!) Many thanks.

Paul Hazelden,

General Manager

Sleeping Out at Clifton Cathedral

Friday, 29th February 2008, 9.30pm; the night when traditionally ladies can propose marriage to their men! It had been pouring with rain most of the day, the wind was gusting alarmingly, rattling our windows at home and making the central heating pretty ineffectual. I bade my kids a fond farewell, donned a warm coat and scarf and drove down into Bristol with my nearest and dearest and another friend. On reaching Clifton village we headed up to the Cathedral, parking in the dark, characterless, concrete car park, and were greeted by a scurrying middle aged lady clutching a sleeping bag, rain mac and bag of provisions.

Paul - sleeping like a baby!

Our little group, now four, wandered around the deserted grounds looking for signs of life. On reaching the back of the Cathedral several teenagers spilled out off the door giggling and clearly very excited. We entered the modern buildings at the back of the Cathedral and saw amongst those gathered, several familiar faces: Paul Hazelden, Alan Goddard, Jeff Cockburn, Lisa Mannion and Kelly Wilkinson.

Now for my confession! I had actually only gone to help Trudie make some coffees and soup for everyone. The others previously mentioned were truly being the heroes and had gone along with the aim of sleeping out 'rough' to fund raise for homeless charities such as CCM and Alabaré. Alan had been collecting cardboard boxes and plastic all week to make the night much more bearable for those sleeping out; he was adamant that he was going to get a reasonable night's sleep.

We made some hot drinks and soup for the 'Rough Sleepers', dolled out chocolate bars and then with only the slightest pang of guilt wished them 'Bon chance!' and went home to the luxury of four solid walls and running hot water.

Lisa and Kelly's open-air manicure.

Anyway, the long and short of it is, they, by all accounts, slept reasonably well, the rain actually held off, although the wind blew like a hurricane and not only that, our amazing supporters raised lots of money for the work of Crisis Centre! For everyone who slept out this was mainly a fun activity and they all went home to a safe and warm place. The sleep out, however, reminded us that for many of the people we see in the Wild Goose this final part of the sleep out exercise is not an option; they wake up cold and perhaps wet and then they stay that way every day - it is their very lives.

Thanks to all who supported this event by either 'sleeping out ' or sponsoring them. You were truly very brave or mad. (Or both!)

Claire

FareShare

You may have heard of it, but what exactly does it do and how does it effect charities like CCM?

FareShare (South West) is a franchise of the national charity Fareshare UK. It's a 'community food network' which works with the food and drink industry to redistribute quality food which would most likely otherwise go into landfill. They supply to organisations working with disadvantaged people, ourselves included.

FareShare works with over 100 companies and 420 local charities across the UK.

They help provide healthy meals to 16,000 homeless and vulnerable people each year.

Last year, they redistributed 2,000 tonnes of quality food contributing to over 3.3 million meals for people in need across the UK.

Obviously, being homeless means generally not getting much in the way of healthy food. At the same time food retailers and wholesalers are throwing away vast quantities of good quality food without the means to arrange and co-ordinate it's distribution amongst needy people groups. That's where FareShare comes in!

An estimated 4 million people in the UK cannot afford or simply don't have a healthy diet. This combined with other hardships such as homelessness or living in insecure accommodation leaves people inevitably open to ill health. In fact, homeless people have an average lifespan of just 42 years compared to the national average of 74 and malnourishment will be a contributing factor. They will also be more likely to suffer from a range of illnesses including heart disease and tuberculosis. Better food and nourishment leads to better physical and mental health, generally improving the quality of a person's life.

The FareShare (SW) project is going well. Members include hostels, day centres, supported housing units and night shelters. The project is staffed almost entirely by volunteers, who come from all walks of life and 62 volunteers have so far worked with the project.

As for the Wild Goose, having the food deliveries from Fareshare has meant we have had plentiful amounts of varied, tasty food available for our clients, it has saved us money and has, in part, enabled us to open the shop for more sessions. For more information about FareShare please visit their website (www.fareshare.org.uk) or call them on 0117 971 1005 .

Please note, we still do need and appreciate your continued support in providing us with tinned and dry food items for the shop. We always need tinned items such as beans, tomatoes, vegetables, fruit, corned beef, ham and tuna plus packets of rice, pasta, sugar, custard, tea and coffee.

Thanks!

Alan's Coffee Shop Update!

Every day I come to work there seems to be an excitement in my heart and new challenges daily. We are not trying to meet targets, we are not trying to tick boxes, we are treating people as I believe Jesus wants us to treat people. We treat them as individuals, look out for the people that others have given up on and try to meet their needs whatever walk of life they are from.

What are we supposed to see as success with our clients? Could it be giving up drugs? Giving up alcohol? Finding accommodation? All of these may be important but the most important thing of all is our clients knowing Jesus as Lord. By us building up trusting relationships this very often allows us to share our faith and I must say I find this a real privilege.

Let me share just a couple of the wonderful things that have happened over the past months. We were asked to help a young man who, because he was over 18, 'the system' didn't recognise him as vulnerable. He had no addiction but he was alone on the streets. We talked about the limited options he had but as he had no addiction he did not fit the criteria for a number of places we could have tried. While out walking in Bristol I came across Woodlands Church offering prayer to people in Stokes Croft. I told them about the young man and after praying with me they asked if they could meet with him. This resulted in him staying with them at one of the Christian community houses in Cotham. This was a real answer to prayer. It gave us time to find and arrange supported accommodation in which he now seems to be very happy. He has also been offered a job and starts it soon. We thank God for his blessing in this situation.

Another recent situation which we asked prayer for was for another young man, aged 18 that we were asked to help. He had faced many major troubles in his life, even at that young age - he is an alcoholic with no family support. He started going to church but unfortunately ended up in prison on remand. I made a phone call to David Powe at Horfield prison to see if he could support this young man as this was the first time he had been to prison. I heard a few days later this young man had given his life to the Lord. We were all overjoyed at this wonderful news. The courts were lenient with him and he is now out on probation. Please pray as we continue to support this young man - he has many challenges ahead of him.

Finally, many of you will recall the young Polish man, Lukas. His journey has been a difficult one and in the last newsletter I shared that Lukas was in a Salvation Army Rehab. Unfortunately he did not complete the programme. We then helped Lukas into alternative supported places but he did not stay. Recently he has been staying with family and friends and we will continue to support Lukas in any way that we can.

There are many people we have helped who are still in recovery of drugs and alcohol and without your prayers and financial support we could not do this work. May I thank you again for all the support given and for God's provision in this work. I would like to tell you much more of the work which we do, so if you would like me to speak to you either individually, or to any groups or churches, I'd love to hear from you.

Alan Goddard 07967 596589

LITE on the Moor

This January at the end of the last LITE course, eleven of us (six students and five staff) went away for an excellent week to Heatree Activity Centre, Dartmoor. Many of us had never been away on an adventure like this, so it was a huge learning curve, from just having to get up in the morning to sharing out cooking duties, engaging in physically demanding activities as well as lots of laughter and a daily Christian meditation.

As you can see from the pictures, we started with some intellectual activities to stimulate the brain and prepare for the rigorous challenges that lay in store...

[There are nine pictures, which take up quite a bit of space, so we have moved them into another web page.]

• See the LITE pictures.

...there were lots of action and team building activities to test us all. None more so than the race to build a raft and paddle to the other side of the lake and back. The event got very competitive, as both teams attempted to soak the other! Other activities included climbing and abseiling, canoeing, archery, caving and low-adventure course.

Andy

NOT GOOD TO BE ALONE

In the book of Genesis we read that mankind is the summit of God's creation. When God made Adam, he said: it is not good that the man should be alone. Very specifically, of course, this relates to God's provision of someone alongside Adam - Eve. But, I believe, this can be taken more generally as well: it is not good for us to be alone. There is the amazingly good news of being in relationship with God, when we come to know him. But there's more! When we come to know God, we are born again into his family: part of God's provision for us. I guess this is a broad subject, and I am just skimming across the surface as an introduction to us thinking about some of the clients of The Crisis Centre.

Many of these people experience aloneness. There could be the physical aloneness of not being with parents and family, of being alone on the streets: for some of our clients the separation from family may have happened very early in life. There is also the emotional aloneness of not feeling wanted or included, again sometimes reflecting childhood experiences and, interestingly, also sometimes a choice to change. One young lady has been involved in the street drugs scene for much of her life: she has recently chosen to change from that lifestyle and was telling me how alone she feels. When she meets people who were her friends, they now distance themselves from her. She is no longer part of that friendship group, but has not yet become part of another group of friends. It will be a big emotional move and hard work to make friendships with people who have not been in addiction: she often talks of how different she feels from these people and how she views herself as 'bad' in comparison with them. Would you like to be alongside someone like this and, perhaps, take her shopping sometimes, or have a chat over a cup of tea or coffee?

Being alongside one of our clients need not be very complicated for us, but it can be very significant for them. This sort of involvement can mean being there for the long haul where that is appropriate, for a specific purpose over a measurable time, or for something in between the two. The opportunities are as varied as the individuals who can benefit from support. With God's help, we aim to demonstrate his patience, care, interest, comfort, encouragement etc. We don't expect to have all the answers, and often what is more important is being with someone so that they are not totally alone with the complications of their lives.

Alongside some general support opportunities, we have a specific need at present which is a bit specialised. A young mum, with a background of addiction as well as a level of mental health difficulty, would greatly value support in the area of child care. She did not experience good parenting herself, and has been living on the streets for years whilst using street drugs. She is now settled in her own home but some of her thinking processes make life generally difficult for her. Ideally, she needs someone to visit her on a regular basis, say weekly, and support her with general child care, routines, boundaries etc. The volunteer would need to be confident and consistent: someone who has had experience of raising their own children and/or fostering would be ideal. It would be so good if you were able to pray for this lady and the need. If you would like to know more about how you might be able to help, please get in touch with me at the CCM office. Trudie Lane Client Support Co-ordinator

The Missing Peace

Do not forget to entertain strangers for in so doing some people have entertained angels without knowing it. Hebrews 13:1

It is only in God's grace and mercy that today I can write this. For thirty years I led a lonely existence with only heroin for company. Death was all I had to look forward to, I was terrified of life. Something was missing, a piece of me couldn't be filled. Little did I know the answer was in the drop-in on City Road, Bristol. I would walk in from the lonely streets with no future, arrogantly thinking the world owed me. I was grateful for the food and drink, the company was nice, there was also a feeling that had been long forgotten - love.

God's love through the staff, despite my behaviour and attitude, could always be found in the café. Today, although the name has changed (now the Wild Goose), God's great work continues and humbly I say 'Thank you Jesus Christ' for bringing me there to work today. It really is the Sex Pistols to Salvation, Buzzcocks to the bible, The Clash to Christianity. The bondage of addiction is broken, that missing peace is now filled by the only thing that fits - a loving God who only gives me freedom.

'If God is for me, who can be against me?'

Ricky

"I just forgot"

By Jewels Gray
Lord, I forgot to talk to you today
And I knew I really should.
You help me every single day,
You've helped me all you could.
It's not that I have just 'given up',
I guess I didn't think
That all the troubles that I've had
Have landed me 'in the drink'.
And all it was I had to do
Was close my eyes and say
"Lord, give me strength, courage and hope
Just to get me through today."

This poem was written by Jewels. For a while she has been using the Wild Goose coffee shop for meals and company but now she is helping out there as a volunteer. She has also been regularly going along to a ladies meeting linked to Bristol Christian Fellowship.

Prayer

A prayer of Sir Francis Drake:
 
Disturb us, Lord, when
We are too well pleased with ourselves,
When our dreams have come true
Because we have dreamed too little,
When we arrived safely
Because we sailed too close to the shore.
 
Disturb us, Lord, when
With the abundance of things we possess
We have lost our thirst
For the waters of life;
Having fallen in love with life,
We have ceased to dream of eternity
And in our efforts to build a new earth,
We have allowed our vision
Of the new Heaven to dim.
 
Disturb us, Lord, to dare more boldly,
To venture on wider seas
Where storms will show your mastery;
Where losing sight of land,
We shall find the stars.
We ask You to push back
The horizons of our hopes;
And to push into the future
In strength, courage, hope, and love.

News

No more stamps

For a long time, many of you have been faithfully collecting stamps for CCM. It has been a great way for people to get involved in supporting us.

However, we have reluctantly made the decision to stop collecting stamps. This is partly because of the lack of space in the office (due to more staff), and partly due to the decreasing income we have been getting from the stamps we collect.

We plan to make our final delivery at the end of April, so if you have been collecting stamps for us, please can you let us have them by then?

Our grateful thanks go to all of you who have been helping us in this way, and we hope you will still be able to support us in other ways. Thank you.

New Cooker

We have been fund-raising for a replacement cooker, as our current one has been working less and less well. We have finally purchased a new double electric cooker which we hope to have installed and operational by the time you read this newsletter.

We are very grateful to all those who gave money towards this. We are looking forward to being able to cook and heat up food much more efficiently - it will make a big difference to everyone using the shop.

New Assistant Coffee Shop Manager

We now have a new Assistant Coffee Shop Manager - Lisa Mannion, who started officially working in the new role at the beginning of March 2008. Lisa has settled in well, is highly regarded by all of our clients and her presence here has enabled the Wild Goose to open for lunch every day. Lisa will write something about herself for the next StreetWise.

Dates for your diary (2008)

About CCM Crisis Centre Ministries is a trading name of Crisis Centre Limited, a registered company limited by guarantee and a registered charity. CCM began in 1984 as a Christian response to the needs of young people, and has developed significant expertise in helping people of all ages who suffer from 'life-disrupting problems.' CCM specialises in helping people who are homeless, addicted and unemployed. We offer food, support and friendship, and then try to help each individual discover how they can move forwards, and to access the help that is available to them. CCM operates as a part of the church in Bristol, and relies on voluntary donations to sustain and develop the work. We are not tied to any particular denomination or group of churches. We work alongside other charities, voluntary groups and statutory agencies to help individuals and develop a more effective framework to care for vulnerable people. We also work to educate people in churches, businesses and other groups about the needs of vulnerable people in our society and what can be done to help them.

Data Protection Act 1998: Crisis Centre Ministries will only use personal data in connection with its charitable purposes. It does not make personal data available to any other organisation.

The last page

The recent appointment of Lisa amongst other things has enabled us to open the Wild Goose Coffee Shop every week day and we are seeing the place full with clients. This leaves us in the situation where we desperately need extra help in the form of volunteers to come in, during the day for about three hours once a week or fortnight. There's no need for you to be the worlds best cook or trained in dealing with our client group, rather you just need to be willing to serve by washing up, dishing out, chatting to people and maybe helping with a little cooking too. It would be great if we could get groups of volunteers from churches to cover particular sessions. Please ring us if you want to get involved.

Other ways you can support us...

Pray - It changes things! Please come along to our monthly prayer meeting or subscribe to our regular prayer emails.

Volunteer - Come and help in the coffee shop during the day or the evening. Help is always needed with students on the LITE course, speak to Andy.

Fund raise - Consider having a fund-raising event at your church or school?

Regularly give - On page 11 there is a standing order form. If you could just give £10 per month and Gift Aid it too, that would make an incredible difference to the work of CCM.

Donations of food - For a full list of items we can use please get in touch.

Thank you for your support!

Final Thought

By Mark Nepo, philosopher, poet, author: