Greetings and peace be with you Ahmed,
I have been speaking out over the years; about trying to arrange an interfaith type of street patrol.
Street Pastors was the vision of one man about 15 years ago, it started in Jamaica. The friend of a minister was shot and killed by gangs of young poor kids on drugs. The minister asked what was the church doing about the problem - nothing.
He prayed with a few people, who then went out to the places these gangs were hanging out. These church goers were able to engage with gang members, and good things started to happen.
Les Isaacs took the idea back to the UK, he found a dozen women, and one man who came out with him in London. From that vision, there are now about fifteen thousand volunteers mostly around the UK, but it is starting to spread through the world.
It works because we work as a 'Trinity'
, the church, council and police together. When we started up in our town over seven years ago, we went to the police and council, and asked them, how can the churches help you? We invited them to a meeting, to test the idea, they came to us with two cheques, one from the council and one from the police for a total of £8,000. There seemed a lot of money around at that time, we see very little now.
We had never mentioned money, it was kind of embaressing because we did not have a bank account, and we did not have any volunteers at the time. Things happened very quickly from that meeting, we went round all the churches in our town, found 17 volunteers, arranged training, most of it was given free of charge by agencies like the police, council, social services, counselling, first aid, safeguarding, etc.
Street Pastors works because of prayer, it is a great blessing to pray with Christians from many denominations, and it is a step towards some kind of unity.
From the video you showed us, you have groups of Muslims willing to go round the streets, they just need a little help and training to do something positive. They need encouraging to make their town more caring, it can be done. Go to all the local mosques, because it is better when you do things together.
Get a few people to pray together for guidance. We pray to a God of power and might.
Blessings
Eric
I have been speaking out over the years; about trying to arrange an interfaith type of street patrol.
Street Pastors was the vision of one man about 15 years ago, it started in Jamaica. The friend of a minister was shot and killed by gangs of young poor kids on drugs. The minister asked what was the church doing about the problem - nothing.
He prayed with a few people, who then went out to the places these gangs were hanging out. These church goers were able to engage with gang members, and good things started to happen.
Les Isaacs took the idea back to the UK, he found a dozen women, and one man who came out with him in London. From that vision, there are now about fifteen thousand volunteers mostly around the UK, but it is starting to spread through the world.
It works because we work as a 'Trinity'
, the church, council and police together. When we started up in our town over seven years ago, we went to the police and council, and asked them, how can the churches help you? We invited them to a meeting, to test the idea, they came to us with two cheques, one from the council and one from the police for a total of £8,000. There seemed a lot of money around at that time, we see very little now.We had never mentioned money, it was kind of embaressing because we did not have a bank account, and we did not have any volunteers at the time. Things happened very quickly from that meeting, we went round all the churches in our town, found 17 volunteers, arranged training, most of it was given free of charge by agencies like the police, council, social services, counselling, first aid, safeguarding, etc.
Street Pastors works because of prayer, it is a great blessing to pray with Christians from many denominations, and it is a step towards some kind of unity.
From the video you showed us, you have groups of Muslims willing to go round the streets, they just need a little help and training to do something positive. They need encouraging to make their town more caring, it can be done. Go to all the local mosques, because it is better when you do things together.
Get a few people to pray together for guidance. We pray to a God of power and might.
Blessings
Eric