Holme Christian Community

Mark Woodhouse shares the amazing story of the church and the HCC care centre, which serves the local community in a range of practical and pastoral ways.

Holme Christian Community (HCC) sits in the centre of a large ex-council estate and, like many housing estates, it has real issues with poverty and deprivation. In fact the Holme Wood estate in Bradford is in the top three percent of the most deprived estates in the country. There are many struggles and issues encountered: poor level of education; lack of child care; very high unemployment; little service for the elderly; nowhere for people to chill (that’s not a pub!); a place for young people to ‘hang out’ which is a safe space and so on. At the same time it is the most fantastic place with the very best people – rough and ready but lovely!

HCC, previously called Holme URC Church, has a passion; a passion to meet the needs of the community and be a real blessing to those around it. 25 years ago we started a care centre to try and meet some of these needs. Today we are still meeting the needs, growing, developing, listening and, of course, praying. We have a wonderful team of people (about 40 employees and about 70 volunteers) helping in all we do. We are constantly looking to develop new areas and new projects, which (strangely enough) seem to materialise reguarly.

One of our biggest struggles is space. Ever since I have been here (about three years) we have been praying for more space to develop the work; asking God whether we should build a lean-to, put a port-a-cabin in the car park or build a room on the back of the current building. However God is gracious and must laugh at our small thinking sometimes!

About six months ago we had a call from another charity which was closing, to ask if we wanted their £600K building in the middle of the estate - basically for nothing!  God is awesome and wonderful and blows your mind sometimes! He is also a God of provision.

We, like all churches, have many struggles. Money is always one along with having the people, paid or volunteers, to do the work. But one of our biggest other struggles is how to keep the care centre and the worshiping community working together as one; beating the sacred secular divide which so often happens in many church community projects. We have helped to do this by insisting that all Elders at HCC have to be trustees of the centre too. We also see it as extremely important that all strategy and direction comes from the elders and the church, which then helps maintain the Christian focus throughout.

One of our newer projects which we started a couple years ago is City Lights. City Lights is a project to reflect God’s love through care, food, and support to those that need it most in the centre of Bradford on a Sunday evening. We own a big yellow double decker bus which we, with other churches in the city, take down to the city centre every Sunday and feed anyone who comes along. We have anywhere between 12 and 20 volunteers feeding anywhere between 60 and 90 people from all sorts of backgrounds, many homeless or living in squats or on a friend’s floor. 

If anyone is interested in finding out more or would like help in looking at starting a community project or developing one we would be delighted to help.

God is good!

Mark Woodhouse, Spring 2009.
For more information on the church and all its projects visit www.hccbradford.org.uk.