From Refuge to Warm Place

 Yesterday afternoon, after many months of looking guiltily at my home desk (it had become a collecting point), I finally sat down and started sorting and throwing out papers. It's because we have visitors coming soon, and ...well, you know how that goes!

And I came across this Wellington Weekly under a pile of papers. I really don't make a habit of keeping WWN copies, but this one I did! And I wondered why? And then I saw it!

From pretty much 4 years ago, an account of the opening of our Warm Place,

It's interesting to consider how we began the Refuge, or as it's now known, "The Warm Place." We prayerfully considered this long and hard at our church meetings. We discussed it, prayed into and sought to understand what God was saying to us.

Warm Place partly came out of the Ukraine Café, partly out of the Utility and Economic Crisis and is a missional response to feed those who cannot afford to do so, hence “Warm Place.”  Since those two big social challenges were experienced, it is accurate to say that their causes have not vanished, WP has matured into broader areas of social and local community connection that give comfort to the lonely and is a safe place for those struggling with mental health. Both of those are real areas of local community need, and as such have placed the church in good standing within the town. Not, predictably as an evangelistic outreach, but as a genuine good news activity of faith. People come because they are welcomed, not judged, nor preached at, but listened to and where possible practically supported.

WP has always existed in our ministries as stretching us, more than a church of our size could ever have considered taking on, let alone sustaining. Probably less than 25% of teams are WBC folk. And yet, WP nonetheless is known as a mInistry of the church. It is an intense, stressful and costly ministry, and it is one where spiritual realities are engaged with.

It is not, and never was intended to be the only outreach of WBC, even if some have perceived it as being so. In the town, others have come after us and developed their own. All of them struggle for volunteers,

WP until 25 was made up of 2 shifts – day and evening, all with their separate teams, which was intentionally designed so that new teams came on site and they were fresh and energised and ready to go. In fact, originally, WP went all through the entire day from morning through to evening, serving lunch and supper. We saw the meal times naturally dominate, so people would come mid-morning and settle in for lunch, then go. Then after lunch it crashed to a mere few sat either asleep, reading or chatting. Then the late afternoon surge for supper took place, with around 25 to 30. In 25 our evening shift numbers crashed out and that made the leadership team make an honest decision to review, and this led to close evenings. Unfortunately, the idea of shifts has in a minority not been heard and some have been present all day and night.

On numerous occasions, some have said “we could be doing this, and that and adding this extra facility and this one too!” I have welcomed such vision but in the end, the overriding reason that these were not moved forward with was that we did not have the people resources. 

At its simplest, it is a response to show the love of Christ to those in the community in response to the call of Jesus to clothe, feed and care for those who cannot, because they are Christ, Matthew 25: 34-40. 

In this context we are not directly evangelistic, but we are entirely missional. The thrust of such mission is therefore to show Christian love through practical care.

In the same way, those who attend Warm Place come from a broad spectrum of largely non-church and faith based background. I know of one distinct Christian attendee, for example. The vast majority are not. We see some homeless, some who are not badly off but lonely, some who struggle with mental health issues, some who are distinctly anti-church and faith.

WP is not a complicated vision, and in fact, the vision is in the Bible! Some suggest that having a more direct evangelistic vision to WP would solve the staffing challenges we have. All the text books say that vision can solve staffing. I suspect that this isn’t the case in this instance. Unless that is, that what is being said here is that “if the vision was one we liked, then we might join in with it.” 

It's good to remember where Refuge/WP came from, and to mark the 4 years we have been carrying out this ministry.