‘What we are doing is prayer in action’
Thousands of people have been helped in Shildon in County Durham by ‘Shildon Alive’ a project set up by St John’s Church in the town. David Tomlinson, priest-in-charge, writes about its work – from community gardens, to a food bank, a credit union, a ‘mini Santa’ project tackling isolation amongst the elderly and ‘guerrilla gardening’ for children.
‘Shildon was once the home of a railway works employing some 4,000 people and there were four working mines around the town. These had all closed by the mid 1980s and economic decline set in.
“The town now has no supermarkets, no banks and no job centre. There are a lot of challenges but people are strong – they look out for each other and support each other.
‘One of the key things that we wanted to do as a church was to listen to the community to find out what was needed.
‘The first thing we did was establish a community garden on a large vacant former mines site where there used to be allotments. The local town council was very keen for it to be redeveloped as allotments once again.
‘The garden became the vehicle which allowed us to listen to the community and develop the rest of the project. We now have two community gardens and the surplus food goes into the food bank – as do eggs from chickens kept in both gardens. We are beginning to see the rebuilding of what was a great North East tradition of keeping allotments.
“We took over a shop unit, now called the Hub, in the centre of Shildon which is run by a team of 46 volunteers and two full-time members of staff.
“Our food bank runs from the Hub – last year we gave away around 6,500 meals. We started a ‘1,000 can challenge’ to collect for the food bank culminating in a big Harvest Celebration with thousands of tins of food brought into the church. All three primary schools support the appeal along with many local people helping to create a real buzz in the community.
‘We collected almost 2,000 cans last year and this year we are on course to collect at least 2,500 which should see the food bank through until January. Sadly food bank use is increasing. During the summer holidays we had twice the number of families with children coming for support from the food bank as we had the previous year.
“We also run a credit union from the Hub, our attempt at challenging loan sharks that we know operate in our community. We collect around £1,000 a week in savings and we encourage people who come in to use the food bank to think about joining the credit union as a way of budgeting for the long term. Again the primary schools have savings clubs and I do annual sessions in our comprehensive school around money management. It surprises young people to hear a vicar talking about money but I simply explain faith is an every day, all of life, lived reality that takes us on a journey to human flourishing, therefore, that includes our ‘daily bread’.
“There’s also housing and alcohol drop-ins run from the Hub, a general chat service where people come in and are befriended and an advocacy service which is in huge demand especially around challenging benefit sanctions and absentee landlords.
“Our work with children includes ‘guerrilla gardening’ – a public gardening idea with support from the town council. It includes over 800 primary school children and quite a number of secondary school children and has given children real pride in their environment.
“We ran a ‘mini Santa’ project last year with 40 children, to take place again this year. Children dress up as Santa, sing a song and give the person in the house a present. The project is a response to social isolation amongst the elderly and a fear of young people by the elderly. One old man was so pleased to have been visited last year that he brought a book of poems into the Hub he had written about the children visiting and wondered if we could read them at one of the services. We subsequently did.
Sometimes I get asked why the church should be doing this, aren’t we about prayers and hymns? I respond that what are doing is prayer in action, and hymns are little more than calls to action. Recently the film ‘I, Daniel Blake’ has brought some of the ways people are forced to live to a wider audience with people within church claiming it as a motivating tool for church action. The film is very accurate in its portrayal, but the church food bank it uses was there long before the movie was made. For us in Shildon our motivation is around our understanding of the gospel and a God who insists, even when faced with appalling brutality, that people matter, really matter. It is the Gospel emphasis on inclusion, justice, and hope that is our motivator, and if in the words of that old hymn by William Gardiner ‘We have a gospel to proclaim’ how better to proclaim it?”
David Tomlinson, Priest in Charge St John's church Shildon
- St John’s won the top prize in the Ecclesiastical Insurance Churches Helping Communities Competition.
Listen to an interview with Revd Tomlinson