Crisis Centre Ministries is a Christian project working with homeless people and those who used to be homeless - with the weak, the poor and the vulnerable. In the words of our tag line, we are bringing God's grace and healing love to people with life-disrupting problems. In other words, to everyone.
What do we mean when we say we are a 'Christian project'? This may sound like an obvious question, but there is a significant question of theology and of strategy behind it.
Most Christian projects are run by people who are motivated by their Christian faith. Sometimes they are happy for this motivation to be public, as part of their Christian witness. Other times, they do not want to talk about their Christian faith in the context of the project - often because they do not want to alienate either the people who they are helping or the people who fund the project. Sometimes they do not want to talk about their faith because it is a question of principle for them: the faith is a personal issue, the project work is public, and the two should not be mixed up.
We do things a bit differently.
Like most other Christian projects, we are motivated by our faith. But we believe that following Jesus means that we must allow our faith not only to motivate our work, but to shape the way we do it.
The details of what we do are somewhat varied. You can read about some of the activities in our newsletter. It often involves providing food to hungry people, building friendships with people who society has abandoned, referring folk to various projects and services when they are ready to access the help being offered, training, counselling, practical support, and much more.
In other words, we seek to provide an authentic Christian ministry, offering a holistic response to anyone who comes to us. At this level, there are only a few points to note.
What does this mean in practice?
If you would like to support us, please sign up to receive the quarterly newsletter and the monthly email prayer letter. Visit the web site and read the news and articles there.
The work is growing, which means we need more prayer, more volunteers, more money and larger premises, so please pray for all these areas.
And we are increasingly being called on to provide assistance to the statutory services: please pray that we continue to be effective, that the relationships with other agencies will grow as God intends, and that we have wisdon to know how and when to use the opportunities we get through these growing relationships.
