St Finnian's Parish Church, Belfast, Northern Ireland

Starting out in Community Mission

St. Finnian’s Parish Church, situated at the top of the Cregagh Road in East Belfast, first got involved in community mission last autumn when Rector Jonathan Pierce felt that the parish could do more to engage with their local community.
Jonathan recalls, ‘I recognised that although our church had strong missionary links overseas, I felt there was much more we could be doing to meet the needs of the community on our doorstep.’ 

Just People? 

To get the ball rolling Jonathan decided to run Tearfund’s Just People? course in his church. Just People? is a six-week interactive course exploring issues of poverty and social justice and culminates in a ‘Day of Action’ designed to ensure that the course doesn’t simply become an intellectual exercise. Each group who take the course are encouraged to identify a need in the community that could be helped by a day of action. This part of the course proved particularly useful for St. Finnians as Jonathan told us, ‘The day of action gave us a focus and a spur to engage with the needs of our local community.’ 

Day of Action  

However, when it came to planning their ‘Day of Action’ St Finnians were not left entirely on their own. Another key element of the Just People? course is that groups are encouraged to liaise with other churches and community groups who are already active in the community. Jonathan explained, ‘We decided to link in with Christians Against Poverty and Willowfield Parish Church who are further along this journey than we are.’ As a result of these conversations St Finnians took part in two community outreaches over the following months. 

Using mission moments  

During advent, members of the church collected non-perishable foodstuffs and used their ‘Day of Action’ to make up hampers for Christians Against Poverty. They also made up little packages of Celebrations sweets which they distributed to the local neighbourhood along with invitations to their Christmas services.
They followed this up at Easter with a project they called ‘Good News for All.’ This time they asked the congregation to collect Cadbury’s Cream Eggs in the months leading up to Easter and then went out delivering the eggs to the surrounding area along with invitations to Holy Week services and a Community Fête in May.
In order to make the services more inclusive they decided to invite speakers from different denominations for each night of Holy Week. ‘We invited speakers from the Methodist Church, the Presbyterian Church, the Roman Catholic Church, the Salvation Army and we did one night ourselves. We were unsure how it would go as it was the first time that so many different dominations had joined together.’

However, the services and the subsequent fête proved very successful and helped to raise the church’s profile in the community. There were also benefits for the congregation themselves as the planning and delivery of these events brought people together and drew more people into the ministry of the church.
Looking ahead the church is now exploring the possibility of starting a soup and bread lunch with an organisation called ‘Root Soup’ which involves members of the homeless community and adults with learning disabilities preparing a soup and bread lunch and then serving it. ‘We're unsure how people will respond but we are testing the water by doing a lunch for the church on 25th of September.’

St Finnians are still exploring how their involvement in community mission will play out in the long term but their efforts in the past year represent a tremendous example of the benefits of getting involved and doing something. They have experienced the impact of community mission for both their neighbourhood and their own church family and Jonathan is in no doubt that while community mission ‘is a scary thing to do it is exciting, very worthwhile and important.’

Find out more about the Just People? course