City church relaunches Love Norwich initiative
By Keith Morris
2010: A large
Norwich church is preparing to relaunch its community work programme under the new title Love Norwich as its moves its location to a big refurbished warehouse in
Sprowston.
Proclaimers Church is set to move to The Space on Roundtree Way, Sprowston, and at the same time the church, which already has a significant presence in the community, hopes to continue and expand the work in reaching out to Norwich.
Pastor Tom Rawls said: “Moving into a larger venue gives us a permanent place from which to expand our community work in Norwich and beyond.”
“We want to create a resource where people can find out about the great things happening in the community, get involved in serving Norwich and let us know about needs that we can help with,” explained Tom. “At the same time we are also hoping to foster a greater love for this fine city among those who live in it!”
The past year has been fruitful with the church continuing to impact people in the local community with the message of Jesus Christ. The pastors and leaders at Proclaimers report that people are connecting with God each week as they are passionately reaching out to the city and beyond.
“Many people are coming to faith in Christ and their lives are being transformed. People from all walks of life, both young and old, are seeing the effects of a personal relationship with Christ,” Tom reports.
The church is excited to see so many young people attending the services and seeing destructive behaviour being lovingly addressed. Many young people who were once involved with crime, illegal drugs and anti-social behaviour are now living a different kind of life. The church reports that they have worked with and positively impacted a number of young people who suffered from self harming, depression and anxiety and panic attacks.
A part of LoveNorwich involves supporting and offering care to those who are house-bound due to illness, visiting the aged and infirmed both in care facilities and their homes to assist in a range of activities. These activities range from house cleaning to providing meals, cleaning gardens to organising shopping for groceries.
Community care has extended to regular visits to the Norwich Prison to conduct church services and visit prisoners looking to make a new start.
This year Proclaimers has specially trained four married couples to provide marriage enrichment courses to those for those who just want to set themselves up for a long and healthy marriage and a marriage preparation course for those planning to get married. Their first Marriage Seminar is on June 25-26 at The Space; more details are on the website
www.proclaimers.com
During the Christmas period, the church distributed over 50 food hampers to families and individuals across Norwich and partnered with
St Martin’s Housing Trust to offer 15 special packs of provisions for people in Norwich. The church raised £800 and local Tesco stores gave a charitable donation of £500 which made the Christmas gifts possible.
The community work outside of Norwich is significant as well as
Hope for Latvia continues to gain recognition nationally. Proclaimers also support a number of other charities like
A21 [a global campaign to stop human trafficking] and
Metamorphic [an international church planting movement], with whom the church are partnering later in the year and Water4Water, a project that aims to provide safe, clean drinking water for people in South-East Asia, in particular in Vietnam. Last year the church gave over £9,000 for wells in Cambodia.
Work has already begun on transforming the former Fabric Warehouse into The Space and the church is looking forward to getting started on some exciting new projects but the lack of a building hasn’t stopped the Love Norwich team from making a new connection with Green Acres Nursing Home which they visited for the first time last week.
You can follow Love Norwich on twitter (@lovenorwich) or if you want more information about lovenorwich.org or any of the community work at Proclaimers contact Owen Morgan:
owenmorgan@proclaimers.com