The United Reformed Church

In the first of our November reflections, we hear from Church Related Community Worker Ann Honey. Ann works at St. Columba's United Reformed Church in Billingham and reflects on eight months of Covid-19 restrictions and what it is like to "be a community worker when we’re all two metres apart and in groups of less than six!"

Please note this reflection was written before the lockdown in England - so the role is even more challenging now! 

Our latest reflection is from Church Related Community Worker (CRCW) Mark Tubby. Mark is the CRCW at the Lighthouse Project – a beacon shining out to our community, which is based at Dovercourt Central Church in Harwich. It is a local ecumenical project shared between the United Reformed Church and Methodist churches.

Mark made the move to Harwich in September 2019 and could never have predicted how his community skills would be so highly utilised in the following few months, with the arrival of the Coronavirus pandemic. Mark said that although there were challenges, he soon found that collaborative working between many local agencies made an enormous difference and he was so proud by the joint working partnerships that formed, in order to serve their community during a crisis. Mark recalls:

“We delivered shopping and prescriptions, created food parcels, set up a pastoral chatline, made and delivered cooked meals and several other tasks and programmes. One of the things that struck me most was the way in which so many of these local organisations came together to work as one, for the good of the community.”

The pandemic, although life-changing has taught us some important lessons. It has taught us to look out for one another and has fostered a sense of community in many places, where it had been lacking before.

“The world as we had come to know it has been flipped around, and that is difficult to get your head around. Yet, also in the news, we heard stories about how people came together to ensure vulnerable folk were looked out for. Here in Harwich we felt that real sense of coming together and forming relationships that will see us through all sorts of challenges.”

So, if we have learnt anything, we have learnt that there is hope for the future and there is hope that we will help each other through this. Mark says: “I felt privileged to be part of the project here, and certainly saw God at work in the lives of many people.”

Read Mark's full reflection: In this Together, here.

This month we have the privilege of hearing from a URC colleague Roo Stewart, Programme Support Officer for Church & Society, who has written an article focusing on the work of one our CRCW projects in Swansea. The Swansea Region of Churches is formed of a number of churches including URC and Methodist LEPs. 

Church Related Community Work student, Fliss Tunnard, reflects on the highs and lows of organising her wedding during the pandemic and how her faith has helped get through these difficult times and find joy in the simple things in life.