A star is born as the Church takes to the streets...
MERESIDE is a large social housing estate on the edge of Blackpool, one of the most deprived towns in the country, and local Christians there have placed no fewer than 750 stars around the estate, each carrying the words “God thinks you’re a star.”
That’s just the beginning! At the moment there is no church building on that estate, so instead of a traditional carol service, at Mereside it’s going to take place on the streets. The wonderful story of Christmas will be told in stages with costumed actors playing the main characters, plenty of carols and tons of mince pies. Everyone will be included.
What terrific ideas! The people of that estate – one where many struggle with self-esteem – will be able to see their lives are precious not because of what they wear or how much money they have in the bank, but because God in Jesus has been born as one of them.
What’s more, none of this would have been possible two years ago. An old church building in Mereside had to close down because of a rotting structure and a declining congregation. Like many estates up and down the country, there was no Church of England presence and some other denominations were also withdrawing.
Freedom Church was launched by Linda Tomkinson and her husband Pete and it’s one of a number of new churches which are at the vanguard of a strategy in the Church of England to have a vibrant, worshipping, loving Christian community on every estate in the country.
This is vital work. In September Theresa May talked about the stigma felt by many people who live on the social housing estates that fringe so many of our towns. And I think she had a point.
Many people in such communities feel marginalised, forgotten and sidelined. I used to work on a large housing estate near Euston Station in central London. People there were sick of being consulted without anyone listening, sick of
things being done to them without any input on their part, sick of hearing promises which always seemed to be broken. Estates can be great places to live, with a strong sense of community. But for many there, life is tough.
Which is why the presence of strong churches on our estates speaking the language of hope is so essential. And what’s more, as Freedom Church shows us, such churches can take us right to the very heart of the message of Christmas. Because out on the margins is where Jesus chose to be born.
I am always struck by the hiddenness of the birth of Jesus. These days we throw in bags of glamour. We set up our cribs to be as beautiful as possible with perfectly turned-out farm animals, clean straw, Mary and Joseph looking like something out of a soap powder advert and a host of glimmering angels.
But think how it must have been in reality. This was a dirty, squalid birth. A family far from home, a baby born in the dead of night in a sleepy town of an occupied and brow-beaten nation, no medical care, no proud parents, no cot except an animal’s feeding trough. Jesus was born into utter poverty in a marginalised place. Surely if he were born today, one of our under-invested, marginalised social housing estates is just the sort of place he would choose.
And the heart of the Christian faith is that, from that lonely stable, Jesus completely changes what it means to be human. By sharing the ordinariness of human life, he raises it up to the life of Heaven. By taking on our poverty, he makes us rich.
BECAUSE the central claim that Christians make is that Jesus is God. Not just a prophet or a teacher or a holy man, but God himself. And what God takes on, God utterly changes. In Jesus God has shared our life and that means that we can share his life.
That’s why churches are at their best when they are alongside people, sharing lives, just as we see in Mereside and in so many estate churches. When Christians can do that, they are doing the work of Jesus.
Last week a friend told me a wonderful story about a trip he made to South Africa in the 1990s. He went out to visit a priest who had been asked to set up a new
church in Flakfontein, one of the most dangerous and violent townships in Johannesburg.
This priest had turned down a nice house in a wealthy part of the city to go to live in the township where he was surrounded by violence and went to sleep each night to the sound of gunfire. But the new church flourished.
When my friend asked why he was taking such a risk, the priest said very simply: “You can’t share the good news with someone unless you first find out what their bad news is. And you won’t find out what their bad news is until you’re alongside them and they trust you.”
Behind the tinsel, the inflatable Santas, the bucket-loads of prosecco and the children tearing open their presents, that is the heart of the Christmas message. Like that priest, Jesus has moved on to our estate. He has come to live alongside us and share in every aspect of our lives, even the bad bits. And as he does so, he raises our human lives up to the life of Heaven so that we can be with him for ever.
It would be all too easy for the Church simply to abandon the estates because ministry there is hard and money to cover the costs of a priest tough to find. But in my view, to do that would be to abandon Jesus himself. He came to be born in the margins. So if we want to celebrate Christmas properly, we need to find him there.
‘Estates can be great places to live but, for many, life is tough’