New 'Christian Helpline Association' Goes On Air

Being a Christian in the world of chaos is not an easy task. In the daily spiritual battle against the sinful nature of man and the environment, Christians face a whole range of problems: spiritual, emotional, psychological, physical, social and relational.

Information is so abundant due to advanced technology, yet 95% of those coming in are irrelevant to people’s life. Just like during a flood, water is everywhere but people can barely find any clean water to drink. Nowadays, there is no true communication between man, and this results in people experiencing loneliness.

No wonder the statistics “Help on the Line” 2003 published by Mental Health Helplines Partnership says, 5.5 million people sought emotional and psychological support from Helplines across the United Kingdom. Nearly 100,000 calls were received in the last year by 10 helplines. This means that Christian Helplines are receiving an average of over 270 calls per day.

There is still a lot of ground to develop in Christian helplines ministry. With this vision, a number of meetings were held to explore the potential and possibility of bringing Christian Helplines together in the nation during 2002. From these it was decided to look at forming an association, and a working party was formed to work on producing documentation to form a basis for this.

A meeting was held between interested parties during May 2003 in London at Premier Lifeline. At this meeting presentations were made of the documents and also about Call Sharing. To date, ten organisations have agreed to be part of the Christian Helplines Association (CHA): Crossline Coventry, Crossline Hull, Crossline Plymouth, Derby: All Nations For Christ, Matthew Project, National Message, Nationwide Christian Trust, Premier Lifeline, Preston Christian Message, UCB Prayerline.

CHA is made distinct by the strong faith foundations of their members. From the 10 member organisations, there are over 250 volunteers who are giving their time freely to serve God and His lost people, and only 12 paid staff.

“On this basis they offer a range of services from a Christian caring perspective to all who call, whatever the caller's faith or even if they have none,” says CHA.

The vision statement of CHA provides, “Our desire is to serve Jesus Christ by serving the people who call us. Together we empower each other, develop good practice and training, support and pray for each other and provide resources to those wishing to establish new Christian Helplines.”

The launch of the new CHA is planned to take place at the Christian Resources Exhibition (CRE) at Sandown Park, Esher on Wednesday, 12 May at 2.45pm in the Arts Cafe. It will be broadcast live on air with Cindy Kent as part of the Premier Christian Radio broadcast from CRE.