St Nicolas Earley Community Action Group

“…what counts is what churches do, much more than what they profess” (George Monbiet – Journalist)

St Nicolas Church is endeavouring to launch what I feel is an exciting initiative to support members of our local community, not as a means of evangelism but as a service, demonstrating God’s love through His Church, for those in need in the wider community of Earley.

Sadly, there have been all too many awful disasters in around the world in the past twelve months alone. Beyond the giving of money, our capacity to help in these events is very limited; however, in our own community of Earley there are also people suffering – not in such dramatic circumstances, fortunately, but suffering all the same, from loneliness, illness, addiction – I’m sure you can add to the list yourself. It is within the capacity of (us) our local church to help these, our neighbours, which is the heart of Christ’s teaching on how we should relate to others.

It was with this thought in mind, and following a series of very interesting workshops entitled ‘How do we…engage with our communities?’ given by the Shaftesbury Society, and facilitated by Jonathan Sharpe (Woodley Baptist Church) and Dan Tyndall, that a small number from St Nicolas set up the St Nicolas Earley Action in the Community Group.

What have we done thus far?

After some initial research and discussion we decided that the sector in the community we could best aim to help are the housebound elderly, by means of a telephone link service. This would involve a weekly phone call, by arrangement, by a named volunteer to check how the person is and to offer avenues of help, where required, thus enabling help to be given before a crisis arises in the person’s life. Further research showed that (whilst Age Concern and other organisations operate such phone links in other parts of the country), no such service is currently available in this part of Berkshire.

We have made informal approaches to: St Nicolas PCC, Age Concern, the local PCT, local GP surgeries, the Crescent Centre and Wokingham District Council, all of whom have welcomed the initiative.

In early October Dan arranged for us to visit a friend of his who is the parish priest in Bilston (a deprived area of Birmingham), who has set up a truly inspiring project, which started off as a telephone link to three wards in the area, and has developed into an engine for the regeneration of the local community on several fronts. Whilst the economic profiles of Bilston and Earley/Wokingham are very different, we are hoping to base our project on the Bilston model.

What are our next steps to be?

a) To build closer relationships with our ‘stakeholder’ partners – e.g. Age Concern, Thrive, Wokingham District Council, local GP surgeries etc.
b) To raise finance to employ a part-time Project Director, to fully research the project and produce a detailed study, giving a structure plan and detail of finances.

This is a major project for a church to contemplate, but as the new Archbishop of York commented in an interview on the Today programme (Radio 4 21/10/05) if the Church is to be seen as relevant in this secular society, it must look outward, not inward and show Jesus’ teaching in action.

Libby Newman.