David Lyall of Action Foundation, Newcastle, concludes this three-part series demonstrating the relationship between church and charity in serving the poor.
I love Jesus’ parables about seeds because they remind me that changing the world often starts with small and seemingly insignificant acts of obedience. At City Church, Newcastle, as we look back with thankfulness on the 10th anniversary of our refugee charity, Action Foundation – now housing over 50 people and teaching language to hundreds from 50+ nations each week – it’s easy to forget how unobtrusively it all began.
It was nearly 20 years ago that the Government decided to disperse asylum seekers away from the South East. We prayed that God would send them to us and that we would have the honour of serving the nations on our doorstep. And so, they started to arrive.
Over the first few years we struggled at times to know how best to serve these new communities but gradually learned the remarkable power of simple things like friendliness and interest in others, not being put off by seemingly strange cultures, sharing food together, learning about one another, and opening up our homes for meals, Bible studies and friendship.
Inevitably over time this led us to grapple with some very practical issues of homelessness and destitution, and we started to help by providing a room to stay or in other ways as we could.
Called to serve
At that time Julian Prior, a member of the church, gave up his marketing job in response to a call of God to give his life to serving the poor. He began to research and pray about the form that this should take. He was greatly affected by one young man ‘M’ from Iran who was struggling with mental health issues and spent some time living on the streets. He ended up in a psychiatric hospital in London and couldn’t be released because he had nowhere to go. Julian visited ‘M’ and was able to secure his release having found accommodation for him with a family in the church. Out of this and further research, Julian decided to create a charity that would provide housing for destitute asylum seekers.
Action Foundation is launched
A kind person in the church lent us a house where we could start to provide a stable base for ‘M’ and some other very vulnerable people. From there, Action Housing came into being and things began to grow.
Another church member suggested that we should provide some simple English language classes one summer holiday, and we were amazed by the way that people from the church and the wider community stepped forward to serve on what is now our thriving Action Language school.
More recently, we have begun to partner with the Home Office to see women released from asylum detention and to be supported in the community.
We have learned many lessons along the way, including the power of prayer, the grace of God, and the importance of simply encouraging one another to keep going in serving the poor. And we keep meeting Jesus in the faces and lives of some amazing individuals. It’s been particularly rewarding to see people who first came to us as clients now serving with us as staff, volunteers and partners.
Our vision for the future is to see churches everywhere empowered to work effectively amongst the nations on our doorstep and for wider change in society so that the whole nation can embrace the nations on our doorstep. And we would love to hear from you, to learn from you and to help you in any way. Do contact us via https://actionfoundation.org.uk/.
David is an elder at City Church, Newcastle and has worked with asylum seekers and refugees for 20 years
STOP PRESS!
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