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Vision closer for Norwich church football outreach

HTfootballorgnisersCFOrganisers of Holy Trinity Football Club, part of the Norfolk Christian Football League, are looking forward to extending their work into the local community in 2015.

 


Holy Trinity Football Club has been meeting at the City Council’s Multi-Use Games Area on Vauxhall Street in Norwich for the last five years, providing a positive activity for young people. In September 2014, the outreach work was recognised as an organisation in its own right – Jenny Lind Park Young People’s Work.

The Park team has now grown to over twenty, on Tuesday and Thursday evenings. This now includes new additions to the pastoral team in Andy Bunter, Ben Artis, Fiona Turner, David and Helen Lawson and Kevin O’Grady.  

In October, Tim Stapleford, who pioneered the initiative, was awarded Norfolk Police’s  2014 ‘Community Citizen of the Year’ award for his work with local young people and for significantly reducing anti-social behaviour.

 A tenancy was taken for the old post office, opposite the park, in September. This is being funded for a year by the Christian Community Trust for Norwich and Norfolk and a significant personal donation. This new resource, however, has also been the result of years of devoted and visionary prayer from many members of Holy Trinity Church, including Sue Beverley, Colin and Carole Crouch and ex-curate Mark Huddlestone. In the last two years this on-going prayer has grown to a crescendo, from the monthly ‘Prayer Focus’ right through to various house groups and individual members of the weekly early morning Wednesday group.

HTfootballCFTim Stapleford said, “The five year journey to this point has not been easy. The last two months have been particularly challenging, with issues of cannabis fuelled disruption from a very small minority of our local teenagers. This has caused us major headaches in preserving an environment that carries more ‘light’ than ‘darkness’ - personified through our mission statement of Colossians 4: 2 - 6.”

The team asks for prayer as they engage ever more closely with the new Holy Trinity young people’s weekday clubs, for the increasing pastoral support and prayer input in the park activity sessions; and the development of the old post office as a financially sustainable community space for a wide variety of Christian support groups from 2015.

Pictured above; the team from Holy Trinity Church and below: the young people in action

Published: 07/01/2015


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