How can we support our communities as we emerge from Lockdown?
As we begin to emerge from lockdown particularly in the United Kingdom, Julia Miller (who facilitates our Pathways from Poverty initiative) reflects and gives some practical advice on how we can serve the needs of our communities and access the resources and expertise to help.
What do we do when things are not the same as they once were? Many of us will feel like we started to run a new race towards the end of March and have been sprinting ever since to adapt to our new world of social isolation and lockdown. Asking ourselves the questions of: How do we keep supporting vulnerable people in our church family? What do we do about the growing needs in our local community? What part is God calling us to play in it all?
By now most of us have working out that the season we have just been hurled into is actually a marathon and not a sprint and may well have found some level of normality within our new Coronavirus response systems. So now, as we pause to catch breath and take stock of where we are, and consider how our communities, services and support might look as we come out of lockdown, we need to keep our eyes fixed on Jesus, to know how we keep moving forward in these strange times, with an expectation that God can cause His Kingdom to continue to grow, whatever the circumstances around us.
We are in an unprecedented time of available funding.
This is THE time to get some financial resources into your storehouse. Funding is currently quite readily available and accessible, for churches and charities that are supporting vulnerable and needy people in our communities. This however is less likely to be the case in six to twelve months’ time, when the needs will still be present and may well be growing. Funding is currently available for crisis management and the expected short to medium-term recovery phase. Take time now to investigate what applications you can submit now, that will help you to be able to deliver appropriate services and support in the future.
Guidance on how to find and successfully apply for grant funding is available in our new series of ‘How to Guides’
Look for opportunities
Pray about the opportunities we have in front of us right now during this period of lockdown, what is God leading us to do as a church family that will bless our local community?
Pray that God will give you faith that you can have even greater impact in the lives of people we have relationship with during this time, than we might have done otherwise. Demonstrating God’s love in action, through the channels we have available to us at the moment, offering practical help to isolated and vulnerable people, blessing those working on the front lines, offering phone support to those who are lonely or struggling with the extra pressures of home schooling and family life and offering prayer support.
Find new ways of inviting people to link with your online church services (if you have them).
Consider joining www.yourneighbour.org a national network of churches making themselves available for people in their local community to connect with them for prayer and support.
Actively explore open doors to create new relationships or deepen and strengthen existing ones – with other local churches, charities and community groups, local government and other statutory services and agencies. Again, this seems to be a great time to engage more with your local or regional council, if you have not done so already and offer what help you have available. In my local area, having set up a hot food hub, we have seen major leaps in favour being shown to us by the council that I was not expecting – even to the extent of writing to the head of our local community foundation vouching for us and asking them to fund us!
Look back and look forward
This is a good time to review your overall and individual community engagement activities that you were running and consider plans for a new season ahead. What do we want our future focus to be? Prayerfully consider what you want to keep doing, stop doing, do differently or start doing. Feel free to download and use the Project Review and Action Planning guide in the new ‘How to Guides’ section.
Is God guiding you to engage with different areas of community life in the future, or engage differently? What changes might happen in our own church family and what needs do we anticipate will get bigger within our community in the months ahead? such as unemployment or debt as the economy strives to recover or compounded mental health issues post lockdown.
Start considering how you might be able to re-structure the support you offer to people as restrictions slowly get lifted, and vulnerable people slowly gain the confidence to start meeting again - initially in small numbers. If you were previously running a large coffee morning, community meal, social drop in or craft group, how will you transition into meeting up again?
Look to grow capacity
Consider how to support people (in your church family and your local community) who are not used to being in financial or emotional need, those who have lost loved ones, lost their jobs or self employed people struggling with a sudden drop in income.
Try and get to know what support is available locally and nationally and how people can access it, so you can signpost people well and ‘walk with them’ through claiming Universal Credit or dealing with debts, domestic violence, mental ill health, addictions and recovery etc.
One excellent resource is Jubilee+ They are currently hosting zoom calls and have created a number of short accessible videos, covering a wide variety of current issues and have a wealth of useful information and contacts available on their website.
Other organisations to mention: Linking Lives, who focus on befriending support for isolated and lonely older people, have set up a new service called Two’s Company to help churches engage with vulnerable people through a simple telephone befriending model.
CAP have also got some new resources that they have made available for churches. Their new downloadable booklet is called Pathways out of poverty! further info can be accessed here.
Cinnamon Network are running a series of useful webinars, that you can access from the link.
We are also regularly adding to our resources on the Empower pages of the Relational Mission website with a new series of ‘How To Guides’ currently covering topics including: Success with Grant Funding, Money Matters & Diversifying Income Streams, Starting new Community Activities, Demonstrating your Impact and Project Reviewing and Action Planning.
Let us Know your Stories
We have heard some great stories about what churches are doing during this time to be a blessing in their community. Do keep letting us know, as mini articles or better yet, record them in a short (2-3 min) video, and we can keep encouraging each other through this challenging season!
Want to discuss further or need help?
Please get in touch if you have questions or need help in serving your community, particularly if you need help with grant funding and accessing resources.
Julia (Miller)