Greetings and peace be with you glo,
I can only say that being a Street Pastor has been a profound experience for me.
We all have to undergo twelve training sessions, and undergo a CRB check with the police; because we come into contact with vulnerable people. This involves showing our ID like a passport and driving licence, and sending a form off.
It costs around £300 to put a person out on the street as a Street Pastor, mostly for the uniform and training. We are each asked to make a donation towards this; even if it is £10. The community and the churches fund the rest.
Our aim is to have enough volunteers so that we only have to go out once a month, some people volunteer to go out more often.
We meet on a Friday evening at 7.30 pm to be briefed by the police, they tell us about any hotspots and problems, and we go to all these trouble areas. We do not go out with the police, our role is more the Good Samaritan, we are not police informers, we strive to bring a little care into the community. We spend time in prayer and go out on the streets about 8pm. We take a half hour break about 10pm and finish around 1am. When we first started we went out in a group of four, two on each side of the road and about fifty metres apart.
Now we go out in twos my partner is in her sixties and has trouble walking any distance, yet somehow us oldies feel relaxed about approaching a dozen youths drinking and being disruptive. We are ordinary citizens with no power, there are no targets to meet, this gives us the time to be with one person for as long as we feel a need.
The police and the local paper have given Street Pastors in our area credit for reducing low level crime and I feel this is a wonderful sideline. I honestly do not know how this works because we do not go telling kids to stop crime rather we try and promote a sense of caring for their friends and caring for others.
We do not go out to preach, but people know we are from the local churches, because we have Street Pastors written in big letters on our jackets. Some people ask us questions about God, some people have asked us to pray for them and their families.
The main site for street pastors is at:
http://www.streetpastors.co.uk/
In the spirit of praying for safer communities.
Eric