May prayer letter

We are now less than two months before Streetreach begins. I guess I am at the place of feeling anxious but also very excited about what will happen this summer. It is an immense privilege to have so many young people around me who have caught the vision of what could happen through this initiative.

Streetreach is about loving people where they are by using very practical expressions of God’s love. Many people within Belfast had heard of the love of God but have perhaps never seen it through the local church. We seek to do that through washing cars, taking refugee’s on a picnic and old age pensioners on a river trip, taking down sectarian paintings off walls, and holding street parties and community wide barbecues.

Please remember Streetreach 2004 as 500 young people reach out to five areas of inner city Belfast: Lower Falls, Willowfield, Lower Shankill, Ballymaccarett and the Holy Land. These are some of the more renowned and broken areas of the city of Belfast. The eve of ‘the twelfth’ of July is a very tense and divided time of year and Streetreach seeks to counteract that by providing a radical alternative to what the city of Belfast has been known for previously.

A key verse for us is: ‘The only thing that counts is faith expressing itself through love’ (Galatians 5:6). The young people seek to represent Christ through Streetreach and try through their actions to live this verse.

Thank you for your partnership in prayer and support,

Neville Willerton

Prayer points

• Give thanks that Belfast City Council, the Police and Queen’s University are supporting us in this work.

• Pray for applications to reach our target of 500.

• For Peace in the City of Belfast, that nothing will hinder the work of Christ’s Kingdom.

• For the servant evangelism teams as they seek to communicate Christ’s love to a hurting people.

• For Church Army as they financially support this initiative.

• For divine opportunities to pray with people on the streets.

• For the young people as they minister in Christ’s name, that they would bring comfort and hope.

• That the spiritual atmosphere of the City would be transformed and the ripple effect of God’s love would be felt far and wide.

• That people would be struck by God’s love through serving hands and praying hearts.

‘We will not lose our young people because we ask too much, we will lose them if we ask too little’. Tony Campolo