INTRODUCING NEIGHBOURHOOD CHAPLAINS

'Around 20% of the UK population is lonely, and half of these

people experience chronic long-term loneliness' - Red Cross 2018

We believe that loneliness isn't just physical and emotional, it's spiritual.

Colin Johnson has been community visiting in his local community since 2006. He found many people who like to have contact with Christians but who won’t necessarily come to church. Many in our neighbourhoods are lonely and isolated, others have questions about the meaning of life and wonder if there is a God and if there is where he is to be found.

Colin realised his work involved three areas: building relationships with strangers, befriending those people and offering practical help from time to time (doing some shopping etc). Colin founded Neighbourhood Chaplains in his local town of Leighton Buzzard to cover these three areas and Counties have developed the idea into a national scheme. There are three types of volunteer: those who are able to talk to strangers and make new contacts, those who are good listeners and befrienders and those who are good at practical things e.g. mowing a lawn, doing some shopping etc.

Following a recent Community Audit across Kendal in June 2019, we discovered as a church that the top 4 issues within our community were; Crime, more youth activities, parking, and loneliness and isolation.

This is when we considered where we could make a difference as a church with the resources we had. Due to not being able to do much about Crime and parking we felt led to explore setting Neighbourhood Chaplains in our town.

We discovered that, 3.9 million say TV is their main 'company’ (Age UK, 2014) and also other research showed that almost 10% of people aged 16 to 24 were "always or often" lonely - the highest proportion of any age group (ONS). We will be concentrating our efforts in estates where we have connections already- i.e church members who live their already.

Will be launching in January 2020 and starting with one street at a time but delivering cards offering support. A few days later we will return to follow up those who would like a visit. This help could be anything from simple befriending to helping hands with some basic gardening. Check out what we're planning to do from our local newspaper, the Westmorland Gazette.

To find out more contact our Neighbourhood Chaplains Co-ordinator Jonny Gios,

07388 620688 or hello@gatewaychurchkendal.org