North London
“We want to be there as fire starters” – Revd Helen Shannon.
Summary
How do you foster a strong community voice? Maybe residents’ associations, or local referendums? This misses one thing. For a strong community voice, you need a strong community.
Revd Helen Shannon has been building community and empowering individuals on three estates in North London. Her aim is to ‘get the residents to grasp a vision of what community should look like’, whether that’s over some new benches or service charges. She does this by bringing people together and building people’s confidence.
Coming from a nearby resource church, she’s moved into the estate to do ‘incarnational ministry’, and is working with a charity set up by the church, Hope North London. One of their main jobs is to befriend people and develop their skills. For example, they run youth groups and positive play activities for children on the Strawberry Vale estate. On the estates where they don’t have a community centre, they do more detached engagement work.
At the same time, they’re working to bring the community together as much as possible. They have run festivals and parties, along with a regular coffee drop-in. This allows people to meet one another and Hope’s workers, empowering the community through the relationships they build. Hope’s workers also helped to set up a food bank to strengthen the community.
As their relationships with the community grew, a church has been established, church@five. It also places an emphasis on empowerment, so everyone helps out where they can. Local lay leaders lead the service and preach. All faith-based and evangelical work is through church@five, whereas Hope try to work on a broader base. This allows them to help people who wouldn’t accept help from the church.
Hope North London and church@five also work with a project called Eden Network, which ‘sends and supports teams of urban missionaries to share the gospel, make disciples and rebuild communities’. This ‘Live in Team’ ensures that Hope’s vision is not removed from the communities that they are serving.
In the short term, Hope’s workers act as advocates for the community. When the housing association offered compensation for a broken heating system, some residents were concerned that this would come straight off their rent arrears when they needed money to eat and to heat their homes. Hope’s workers found that many people had the same problem, and were able to raise this issue with the housing association. This led them to provide food vouchers for those in this situation.
In the long term, though, Hope see themselves as ‘fire-starters’, empowering the community to speak for themselves. This work is starting to pay off. Since the church’s arrival, a residents’ association has been created, who do a great job of raising issues with the housing association.
Background
The three estates that Hope work across – Strawberry Vale, The Grange and Prospect Ring – all have high levels of deprivation, because of unemployment and low wages. Strawberry Vale has division literally built into it. People who live right next to one another are separated by gates, while people stay in their houses because the enclosed passageways of the estate feel unsafe. It’s no wonder that until recently there was no residents’ association. While the housing association would offer public meetings, some residents felt unable to raise their issues, feeling alone in their situations. While there used to be youth work, this was stopped in recent years.
Thirty years ago, Helen was a single mum living on a housing estate. She understood the powerlessness that many felt. When she was called to ministry, she was eager to help those who were in the position she’d been in, so worked with her resource church, St Barnabas, to move back onto an estate.
Helen was trained in ‘incarnational’ ministry. Incarnational ministers may not preach on a regular basis. Their ministry focuses more on action in their community. Helen did not run church services for over two years, instead helping her neighbours, showing them God’s love. While this often leads people to find Jesus, the help given is unconditional.
Hope North London is a Christian charity – founded twenty years ago by St Barnabas – which originally ran youth centres. In recent years, they moved to a less ‘attractional’ model, instead running activities and outreach work on the estates where they were needed.
Impact
Partly because of the community engagement Hope encouraged, a Residents’ Association sprang up in Strawberry Vale in a time of crisis. This means that, while Hope and church@five can still advocate for people, they are allies of the community rather than trying to represent them.
Because of the relationships that they have built, they are able to step in when the community needs them. For example, when the estate’s boiler was broken, they put on a nightly hot meal to make up for the added financial pressures.
Both the council and the housing association appreciate what they do, especially as they’d like to do more themselves but are short of funds.
church@five has a large, broad attendance, with a weekly attendance of between fifty-five and seventy-five people, with one hundred on their books, despite only being a few years old. They have been particularly successful at attracting men – a missing demographic in many churches. They believe that this is due to their ethos of giving everyone a job. They are well known in their estate because of their and Hope’s work with the community, and have good relationships with the people of all faiths and none on their estate.
What do you need?
Personnel
Hope North London have a team of six. Helen encourages churches not to ‘overwhelm an estate. It’s about putting those few people in who can be firestarters.’
Finances and space
Revd Helen Shannon’s salary and accommodation is provided by her former church, St Barnabas North London.
Church@Five was set up after Helen had built relationships with her neighbours for over two years. It is funded by St Barnabas.
They have an agreement with the community centre, through which they are allowed to use it free of charge for worship in exchange for providing community work.
They emphasise the benefit of sustainable funding so that you are not ‘pulled in different directions’.
Tips
You can’t build residents’ voice if residents don’t feel part of a community.
Helen suggests that you shouldn’t come in with a ‘programme’ for residents, because this can encourage a ‘provider client mentality’.
‘Don’t try to be a superhero… It isn’t about doing things for people, it’s about doing things with them.’
Find out more about all this work on the website of St Barnabas North London.
