Prayer Letter
April 2002

Praying for Crisis Centre Ministries,
its work, staff and clients
in the context of Bristol's inner city areas.

You will most likely have received an invitation to our Worship and Intercession tomorrow evening. We are exploring various ways in which people may want to support us in prayer: one of these may be intercession and other possibilities include our bi-monthly prayer meeting, using this prayer sheet, coming to the shop any morning it is open (Monday, Tuesday, Thursday) and joining us as a team at 10.30am as we pray together, praying together with friends in homes, etc. We would like to look at how best we can support and facilitate prayers, and also receive feedback. We'd value your prayers for this whole area: please let me know if there is some particular area you would like to be involved in.

BRIDGEHEAD LUNCH

This is such an encouragement. Quite a few 'clients' are coming regularly and each has their own very complicated life issues which they are working through. It is a privilege to have a good staff team involved in this, including a number of volunteers. This is really important in terms of following up people who become Christians and we would ask you to pray specifically regarding this aspect. Recently, most of the people who are involved in Bridgehead Lunch went to a Catch the Fire conference in Dudley: it was a good to have the opportunity to be together as a group outside of The Crisis Centre, some of the folk were ministered to - and it was fun! At present we are considering what teaching to use for this group and we'd appreciate your prayers regarding that. Also, it would be good for new people to join the group.

Please pray for Sam as she heads up Bridgehead Church, as well as for the staff team who work with her.

COFFEE SHOP

We are so very grateful to the many people who volunteer with us - without them it would not be possible to offer the service we do in the coffee shop. We have been very privileged to have Bristol Christian Fellowship's year team - M6/8 - involved with us and they have now moved on to other aspects of their year's course. A number of students from Trinity Theological College will be starting placement with us over the next few months. However, we still need more volunteers particularly for the daytime and we'd appreciate your prayers about this and also for the daytime session generally, that we will continue to see people responding to God and that we will make the most of the opportunities God gives us to engage with our clients.

Evenings in the shop are going well and these are often staffed solely by volunteers, some of whom are taking on the added responsibility of Duty Manager. Please pray for the evening teams - that they will enjoy their involvement, grow in their understanding of God and of the people who use the Centre, have the wisdom they need to handle the situations that arise, be kept safe (there have been some very unpleasant incidents in the St Pauls area over the last month), see people responding to God and lives changing.

Please pray for Sam (pastoral care co-ordinator) and Jayne (catering co-ordinator) in their roles in the shop.

We have a specific need in the shop for someone who can monitor our maintenance needs and undertake basic DIY.

LITE

A way forward has opened up in respect of part-funding for the LITE Course and we are very grateful to God and to the City of Bristol College (Brunel Centre) for this. Details are yet to be finalised. There continues to be the difficulties arising from the lack of consistency and motivation in our client group and this affects the operation of LITE considerably. Our approach relies on group work, but often the students do not turn up. Please continue to pray for us as we explore practical ways to address this. Students from previous courses are continuing to do well, and there is much evidence of the benefit of the training we are offering in terms of the changing lives of those who have been students. We have introduced a modular approach and, for this to be applied in a way which is relevant to our clients, we would need to be able to offer the first module on as continual a basis as possible. We need to be able to offer this module at the point of a client's motivation if this is at all possible, and in that way begin to establish relationship which will lay a platform for ongoing support and training. To be able to offer training on this basis requires that we appoint someone alongside Andy Luxford (Project Manager) and we would value your prayers regarding this.

PUBLIC RELATIONS

We are having an Open Day on Friday 12 July from 2 to 7 pm. Please come if you can. We'll be planning out the day to include testimonies from clients, presentations of various aspects of the work etc. Before it happens, as well as prepare for the actual day, we need to redecorate the shop and update our display stands. There is a lot to do and your prayer support is invaluable. Clive Richards from Trinity Tabernacle is helping us with the planning and the advertising of this day - we are very grateful to him. Please pray for him, that the time he makes available to us will be especially productive.

We would like to update our display stands generally with a view to placing these in various churches across the city to raise awareness of the work we are doing and ways in which people can support us. This goes alongside such things as speaking engagements, arranging sponsorship and promoting the work generally and it would be good to have someone working with us who would be able to take responsibility for this aspect of our work. Please pray.

OTHER

Please pray for the staff team (Paul, Andy, Trudie, Sam, Jayne) and the Council of Management (Anni, Richard, Martin, Anne-Marie, Ann, Sue, George, Jill, Dave).

Trudie Lane
22.4.02

Link to hit counter: