Friday, September 15, 2006

Street Pastors

I just read about Street Pastors in this months' Christianity magazine. To quote the website:
A Street Pastor is a Church leader/minister or member with a concern for society - in particular young people who feel themselves to be excluded and marginalised - and who is willing to engage people where they are, in terms of their thinking (i.e. their perspective of life) and location (i.e. where they hang out - be it on the streets, in the pubs and clubs or at parties etc).

It sounds like a pretty cool thing to do, and has some amazing results. To take an example from the article, the Met Police Disorder Data is quoted as saying there has a reduction in crime of 74% in Camberwell since the Street Pastors started their operations there.

This is the sort of thing that I think it is absolutely vital for Christians to do. It's all very well telling people about Christ and what he's done for me, but that doesn't actually mean anything to them. They haven't experienced him the way I have. Being a Street Pastor (or doing something in the same sort of vein) gives us the opportunity to demonstrate God's love, not just to talk about it.


It's hard to say how much scope there would be for this on-campus but perhaps something could be set up in Coventry city centre...

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