Baptists in Bristol witness Christ, transform communities

|PIC1|Bristol is home to over 400,000 people and is the UK's ninth biggest city. It is also home to twenty-three Baptist Union churches, providing Christian witness and trying to transform communities across the city. Here are two examples of two Baptist led initiatives that are making a difference.

Totterdown Baptist Church

Your local park may be somewhere you walk the dog or take your child to the swings but to Totterdown Baptist Church it has become a major part of their ministry.

In 2006, during Love Bristol, a forerunner of Hope '08, groups of young Christian volunteers helped restore benches and clean up Perretts Park ( just south of Temple Meads Railway Station). This one-off act highlighted the need for long-term maintenance of the park.

Totterdown Baptist minister, Laurie Burn, canvassed local opinion leading to an action day in April 2007 when thirty volunteers from the church and community tidied up the park.

The Community of Perrett's Park (COPP) was born and has since organised bulb-planting, a picnic in the park, carols in the park and other events.

One of the helpers, Debra Atkins, was brought up an atheist but has subsequently become a Christian and was baptised last October.

|PIC2|Laurie is finding the park is building links between the church and the community.

"When I go in the park, everyone knows who I am. People are aware that the church is involved in the community which is really good."

re:source

re:source is an urban ministry project set up to help small Baptist churches in deprived areas of Bristol reach out and play an active part in their communities. It also provides volunteers the opportunity to get a year of ministry training and experience in urban mission.

Mary Clark grew up on a housing estate and vowed never to return, but when she joined re:source as a volunteer in 2005 she was based at Lawrence Weston Baptist Church on a needy housing estate in the north west of the city.

"God has got a sense of humour!" she says.

Membership at this church had dwindled to eight elderly women and a man when Mary joined them. Working with Westbury-on-Trym Baptist Church who has released their minister Sheila Cooper to work at Lawrence Weston, Cairns Road Baptist Church and others within the local Baptist cluster, together they have built up relationships with people on the estate and the congregation have more than doubled in size.

|PIC3|"They are being loved into the church," Mary says.

Work has also been carried out on maintaining the somewhat dilapidated church building so it can better serve the community.

Mike Shaw, Project Director of re:source who is funded by Home Mission, believes that their work, together with support from the larger suburban churches, is vitally important in not only transforming communities but keeping Christian witness alive where there is deepest need.

"If we don't do something with the small churches then they won't exist in four years time. The smaller churches are often in areas where there are the largest amounts of people in serious need. If those churches die, we are actually removing church from the poorest.

"re:source is critical, as is Home Mission. Unless there is a pooling capacity like Home Mission, the (Baptist) church in this country will only function in suburban areas."

On the web:
www.tbc.org.uk
www.thecommunityofperrettspark.co.uk
www.resourcebristol.org


Copyright: Baptist Union of Great Britain, printed with permission