Social Transformation is alive at B&A Church!

This time last year, we were just getting together this crazy idea of running a kitchen offering free meals to churches opening their doors to people struggling with the cost of living crisis. Getting the staff, the kit, the processes and the church partners together whilst trying to sustain our own needs AND then moving churches at Easter was a wild ride! 

We had some amazingly generous donations along the way from Bristol City Churches Fund, Jabez Trust, Benefact Trust, St Thomas Ecclesiastical Charity, Feeding Bristol, Portland Brown, Brisdoc, Nisbet Trust, Richards Poor Fund and Love Your Neighbour.

We were asked recently when this project began. I said "33 A.D." to the person asking. Joking aside, there's more than an element of truth to that. Jesus provided food for the hungry and was often sharing a meal with whoever would eat with him. Acts tells us that the church carried on in a similar vein. Our part in that story really took off in 2019 when Soul Food began at B&A. That mustard seed has spread through the life of B&A into other ministries and now is being spread across other churches. At their core, each one is a simple meal at a table where the invitation is given for guests to join us at another table, the banquet of the Lord in heaven. It really is that simple!

As we prepare for another winter and further rising costs, we're planning to prepare more food for more churches for more people. We've been working out how we can improve our kit so that food can be ready not when our team is available but when churches are most fruitfully open. 

With the amazing help of Love Your Neighbour, we've been able to recruit Ron Cross as our Social Transformation Lead. He's doing this job three days per week, alongside his work with Open Doors. Ron, Trudi and myself have enjoyed being on the Love Your Neighbour training scheme. It has really sharpened our understanding of what we're doing and what we can do next. We're thinking about how we can move beyond the care of people in the crisis of poverty to thinking about how we can address the causes of poverty with them. We're also beginning to dream about what God might want to do with this precious thing that he has given us.

If you'd like to find out more about how you can join in on this project, have a look here. B&A Meals.

Rev Ron Cross - B&A Church’s new Social Transformation Lead