Street Pastors
Street Pastors Street Pastors is a national charity started by Ascension Trust in 2003 and operates in 23 London Boroughs and many towns and cities across the UK, such as Nottingham, Leiceister, Manchester, Portsmouth, Colchester, Southend and Romford. Wherever it is established, there has been a dramatic reduction is crime and anti-social behaviour. The first patrol of Chelmsford Street Pastors went out on the street on 11 April 2008. To date there are 13 churches involved in the scheme with 24 Street Pastors and 33 combined Prayer Partners. We are in the process of recruiting more Street Pastors with a view to starting our next course of training in November 2008. The criteria for those wishing to train is that they must be aged between 18 and 80 and must have been a member of a christian organisation for at least 18 months. Prayer Partners may join the team at anytime. We are always fund raising to pay for training, uniforms, and day- to-day running costs. To date we have been supported by Essex Police, Chelmsford Bourough Council, Pub Link and various churches in and around Chelmsford Chelmsford Street Pastors- New year 2009 update As we enter 2009 the Chelmsford Street Pastors team have a tremendous amount for which to be thankful. We are grateful for the generous and ongoing support we have received from the Chelmsford Borough Council and our weekly cooperation with the Town Centre police. Our relationships with the door staff and club managers have continued to develop and we feel that we are an accepted part of the night economy in Chelmsford. We have had a great response to our Street Pastor recruiting programme. We started in 2008 with the first wave and 24 trainees. We hoped to add another dozen for the November training and here we are in January 2009 training another 24. This means that once they are qualified we can put out stronger teams and we won’t need to call on pastors more often than they requested. Where we do need additional volunteers is for the prayer team at base, but several of the street team are willing to join the prayer team when we are short, so hopefully we can cover all the Fridays and Saturdays through 2009. Our thanks to James and Hayley for leading the November training and Janet and Phil for organising the January sessions When Phil was collecting the radio from CCTV after Christmas the people at the CCTV base said "We really missed you on Christmas eve, it was a wild night and the calming influence of the Street Pastors was really noticed" So it looks as though we need to add Christmas Eve and maybe New Years Eve to our rota. They are both Thursdays in 2009. There is some evidence from the police incident records that the number of ‘incidents’ in the six months from April 2008 was down 30% on the same period in 2007. We had our first patrols on 11th April 2008 During the last few months we have spent time with Pastors from Bishops Stortford, Braintree and Colchester and we hope to send delegates to the national coordinators forum in March, where we can learn from, and share experiences with, other teams. During 2008 our rota coordinator Ivor and our treasurer Tom have done magnificent jobs keeping us on schedule and watching over our funds. In the months to come we need to pray for the ongoing administration of the team as it is getting more of a task as the months go by. Our team now involves 73 volunteers, in both prayer and street teams. That is a lot of people to keep informed and ensure that they feel part of the Street Pastor family as the project grows We value the prayer and financial support we have had from our local churches, and we ask that they will continue that during 2009. We see ourselves as the representatives of the whole Christian community, expressing concern, prayer and practical help towards those who use the night economy in our much-loved County town of Chelmsford If you would like more information please contact Tony Lees on 01245 400388 or Carol Kellingray on 01245 262867 or email; chelmsford @street pastors.org.uk
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