Happy is our new lodger. He’s also the Vicar’s new apprentice (aka the ministry trainee). Yesterday he went to a training event about our area. It was laid on by diocesan missioners with input from speakers from the local council and other taxpayer funded bodies.
We live in Sandwell, one of the most deprived boroughs in the country. Happy came back with lots of bumf and today I thought I’d just share a few choice statistics on our area:
- 8% of people in our borough are on Jobseekers Allowance – twice the national average.
- House prices round here are below the national average by 35%.
- There is not a single bookshop in the borough (though this does not include the W H Smith in our high street – I guess they mean independent booksellers or Waterstones and the like).
- There is no cinema in the borough.
- Most of the famous people from the area appear to be comedians (although the folk at the session kept on talking about Bishop Asbury, who neither Happy nor we had heard of before, but Wikipedia has enlightened me).
Where we are
Happy came back with a lovely poster with photos of all the local councillors, including the three who represent the ward we live in. Sadly, when I contacted them by email more than a fortnight ago to ask about an issue that has been bugging me for a while, I received no acknowledgement and no reply. And not a single councillor showed up to a controversial meeting about a new local housing development last night. So I don’t think I’ll be putting the poster up any time soon.
But if you would like to start a business with an eager workforce, or commute to Birmingham City Centre in 15 minutes, you like to laugh a lot, you’re happy to use a library or The Book Depository for reading matter, you don’t mind watching your films on dvd a little after release, you want to buy a cheap house and get involved a local church which wants to make a difference, this is the place to be.
The Vicar's Wife 
You need a grant from CUF!
Hi Tim and welcome. We’re doing lots in our church, but what we’d love to have is people to help in the work of bringing the hope of Jesus to our broken neighbourhood. A CUF grant of money would enable us to fund activities (and perhaps staff), but what we’d love is a CUF grant of people, not just church workers but congregation members who want to live the gospel out in our community.
I’d love to hear more about what we at CUF can do to support you. How do you turn money into people? Should CUF set up a volunteering dating agency? (a grant is perhaps too easy….) I’d love to offer a ‘people grant’, money to motivate and engage people?
Hi Tim. A dating agency sounds great – though there are already a few about (Careforce, 9:38 etc) and it’s easier to aim things at folk who’d like to work in the church full time. The challenge is to encourage ‘normal’ people to move to the tough places.
How about encouraging and equipping clergy in more affluent areas to send their folk to the inner city? A tithe of people, perhaps?
In the end, we need to pray for God’s hand in this. Only he can give people a heart for this type of ministry.
I rememer a curate at a previous church who told be about the problem he’d noticed in the East End of London:
People would become Christians, as their lives were transformed by the Gospel they would work harder at their jobs (or get jobs if they’d not really bothered before), they would earn more money, and be able to afford to live elsewhere.
The result was that the church which was seeing a considerable harvest was not a placec where people would put down long (15-20 year) roots which was a real shame. (as a side-note, it’s understandable how that sequence of events can be twisted to suggest a prosperity gospel).
Good to remember that it’s Jesus’ church, and he WILL build it.
Hi Pete. Our church suffers from this phenomenon a little: Christians have moved out of the area, but have stuck with the church, which is great as they are committed servants of the church family. But evangelism in the parish is harder because around 60% of our folk don’t live here. Many have a real heart for the area, though, so the challenge is how to harness that, working ‘with the strength God provides, so that in all things God may be praised through Jesus Christ’ and trusting him for the outcome.
Husband has just come up with a way to make sure that your councillors do respond to you.
There is a website http://www.writetothem.com/ where you can contact them (and MPs, MEPs etc.) and they keep a record and chase them up if they do not respond – or at least they did that for him.
Might be worth giving it a go?..
Hi
Your blog piece and the comments above remind me of the late Bishop David Shepperd’s book “Built as a City” based on his experiences in East London’s Canning Town. Today’s Essex man and woman were yesterday’s inner city dwellers. I guess a number of these people will be those who, having become Christians, better themselves and end up moving out.
I know from my own inner city experience that one problem for Christian couples is the lack of good schools where they feel confident their kids will get a good education. So even if they start out living as a couple in the inner city, they move out when a family begins to come along.
I remember one of the kids telling a Christian youth work colleague: “It’s all right for you Christians, you can move out whenever you like. We’re stuck here.” It takes a lot of commitment to put down roots in a deprived area and go for the long run.
Personally, I moved on before settling down into marriage, etc. For me it was more about where jobs were, but I know it would have been really hard to stay and keep put.
Thanks for that site, Icklesis, I’ll resend my messages through them and see if I can get a response!
Welcome GrahamR. The lack of ‘good’ schools has not been a massive issue for us – our kids have been at primary schools attached to our church both in the Vicar’s curacy and now. And there is plenty of access to decent secondary education too. Although the primary schools our kids have attended don’t look great on an OFSTED report, actually they have been brilliant. If schooling is a massive issue there’s always homeschooling. And near us there’s an excellent independent Christian school which has flexible fees depending on income.
The question is really about what we want for our kids and where our priorities are. Do we prioritise their educational opportunities or teaching them to to love the Lord? Do they have to go to Oxbridge or will a rather less prestigious university do? I think Christians can sometimes be pretty worldly in this area. Obviously our kids need to be in school where they can learn and not be led away from the Lord, but middle class schools where money rules can be a trap as well as inner city ones.
Dear Vicars Wife,
I was wondering where you found the image of Sandwell with the different towns demarcated? I’d like to use the image in a report but I need to acknowledge the source.
Many thanks,
Jemima
Hi Jemima. Apologies for the late response. This is the image https://openaccess.sandwellhomes.org.uk/Images/SandwellImageMap.gif