It is about being the church in action on the streets at nightime, in pubs, clubs, takeaways, in residential areas, housing estates, city centres and more; listening, caring & helping where possible. There are 1000 Street Pastors in the UK across 30 locations of towns & cities. They train for a year setting aside one Saturday a month to focus on listening skills, child protection, working in partnership with others, safety, drugs & alcohol issues and more. Street Pastors operate in pairs up to small groups by simply walking around a specific area on a Friday or Saturday night on a regular basis from about 7pm-midnight.
In the areas where Street Pastors operate crime is often reduced dramatically as people begin to forge new kinds of relationships of trust, respect and care together in their communities.
At St. Mark's United Reformed Church in Wythenshawe we have a vision for sharing Street Pastors in Wythenshawe alongside other Christians from our area. Why? We believe God is a sending out God who wants us to go to where people are, to learn a new language from and with them, to listen and show care and respect for people in our own communities.
Three people from St. Marks have begun the 2008 training to become Street Pastors but a minimum of 12 people are needed to start Street Pastors in an area so we need your support. If you are from a church in Wythenshawe & interested to learn more then contact us - our number is in the directory. If you're not from Wythenshawe & are interested then visit the Street Pastors website & see if you can train to join a team near you. Street Pastors runs in several different countries & there are now enquiries from churches wanting to start it in many places across the world.
We hope that training to join a team elsewhere in Manchester will give our trainee Street Pastors the necessary experience of being part of a team starting up & be able to share that in Wythenshawe. There is a new training series for Manchester next in Feb 2009 - we hope you will find out more & join in!
