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September 2005, Page 2.
Index of articles:
by subject,
by date.
In this issue:
September 2005
Harvest & Song,
The Gateway,
Chorltons,
Urban Village,
Question.
Gateway to a new Ravenscliffe
The Gateway Thackeray Road, Ravenscliffe
Celebration and Fun Day 12 noon to 4pm
Circus Skills, Jazz Band,
2pm Official Opening of the Centre Everyone is welcome. |
There's a new community building gone up on Ravenscliffe Avenue, opposite the shops and former Methodist Church (now the Housing office). The Ravenscliffe Community Association is behind it (it also serves Greengates), and back in June I popped in to find out what it was all about.
For many years the association has worked in a small way from the basement of the former church, but now it has been given funding for a centre and staff to make a real difference to the local people. The aims are to address all the local needs: address poverty, bring people together, reduce isolation, help people into work, improve health, and increase people's sense of belonging and commitment to the area, and have fun while doing it.
What's that to do with the church? Well of course we believe that Jesus came so that people could have life in all its fullness, so we support any efforts to help people to get more out of life. But more than that, these aspirations were part of what the Ravenscliffe Christian Project was about, and I was very encouraged to meet the Volunteer Support Worker, Margaret Brice, on my first visit.
Margaret has worked with the Buttershaw Baptist Church's Family Centre, and came here wondering if God was asking her to help do the same types of things in our area? "What is your vision for what God might do on this estate?" she asked me, on that day when we first met.
Honesty is always the best policy in these matters. "I don't know yet," I replied, "but maybe if you share your vision we work together." So since then I've been looking for ways in which we can get on board with what God might do in people's lives through the Gateway.
John Hartley