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“So what’s a street pastor then? Are you preaching? Is it something to do with milk? What kind of pasta are you serving tonight? Are you a choir? (delete as appropriate)”
“No, we’re a group of people who are out on a Friday night keeping an eye out for people, making sure they’re ok.”
“You mean people who’ve had a bit too much? That’s a really good idea. So, how much do you get paid then?”
“Nothing, we’re volunteers.”
“Really? You guys are amazing. Can I shake your hand?”
And so goes a typical conversation when we’re out on patrol.
Street Pastors is a national organisation and Cambridge is one of almost 90 locations that are served every week. The team consists of Christians from all sorts of churches and backgrounds, with different motivations but all wanting to make Friday nights in Cambridge safer. We each do one patrol between 10pm and 4am a month with 4 or 5 other people.
We stop and chat to people who are on their own, hand out water and flip flops to girls who can’t wear their high heels any more, help people who are throwing up (or their friends) and call an ambulance if it’s serious, walk people to their cars/taxis and pick up glass so that it doesn’t get used in a fight later. We’re linked by radio to the CCTV control room and the bouncers and get calls from them about people they’ve seen that they’re concerned about. The response from people we’ve met has been overwhelming positive.
How can I get involved?
There are two areas where we are looking to recruit more people.
Prayer – Street Pastors is a success because we have people prying for us. Every pastor has a prayer partner to pray for us as individuals (thank you Kate Lee). We also have Prayer Pastors who pray for us at our base when we’re out on patrol but we don’t have enough for every week and very few are willing to stay for the whole length of our patrol. Can you help us? Could you become one of our Prayer Pastors? You could volunteer to do a whole patrol (which would be amazing) or just until midnight. If you don’t fancy Friday nights could you pray for us another time? We have a weekly prayer letter that keeps people informed.
Patrols – we may have only launched at the end of March but we’re already looking to expand the team so that we can have a patrol out on Saturday nights as well. Could you go out and be Jesus to the living-for-the-weekend culture? I was terrified of the thought but have loved every minute. I’ve found that the hardest bit is going to bed so late! There is a full training programme.
Please talk to me if you want to know more or would like to come out as an observer and witness Street Pastors first hand.
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Katharine Lingwood, 05/08/2009 |
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