Hi everyone,                 9th February 2009

We met with the Street Pastors Steering Group today – representatives from the Police, W+P BC (and normally the Paramedics, but they couldn’t make it today). We make a quarterly report back to them – the highlights are below:

Period covered was November 08 through to January 09 – a total of 14 patrol nights, including Boxing Night and New Year’s Eve. During this period we had a total of 89 significant contacts with people in the Town Centre.
The significant contacts included the (gentle) intervention in heated arguments between males + females, the accompanying of lone females to taxis/places of safety, and speaking to female about the death of a close relative.
During the period 144 bottles, 20 glasses and 26 incidents of broken glass were cleared from the streets. We gave away 14 bottles of water, 6 pairs of flip-flops and 1 space blanket.
We had several occasions of the Prayer Teams accurately guiding the Street Teams to people in need, plus heated situations suddenly dissipating away when prayed for by both Street and Prayer Teams.

Thanks for your continued support of the Street Pastor initiative.

From Tony Stephens,       1st February 2009

Street Pastors continue to operate on Friday nights (yes it has been cold!) and have significant contacts even though it's been relatively quiet in town after Christmas. As you may be aware, alongside Fridays, we are on track to launch Saturday night patrols from Easter onwards. This has been welcomed and encouraged by W+P BC, the Police, Paramedics and the Pubs and Clubs. We've also had occasions recently where club door staff have contacted us to help those who are in need – I take this as a real sign that the Street Pastor Teams are a valued presence in the Weymouth night-time economy.

We now need your help in a further round of recruitment – this time for our Prayer Teams. The Prayer Teams operate inside St. Mary's Church during the times that the Street Pastor Teams are on the streets. We've been staggered (although we shouldn't have been!) at what the Prayer Teams have brought to the whole initiative – often they have received words or pictures, or been guided to specific parts of scripture which has served to direct the Street Pastors to people in need. One such instance was when a member of a Prayer Team received the words "Cast you net on the other side" – this led the Street Pastor Team to walk in a different area from where they would normally go, and in the process of doing so were able to be on hand when a domestic fight broke out between two youngsters. The presence and intervention of the Street Pastors Team prevented things escalating to a point where a serious injury could have occurred. This would not have been possible without the openness to God of the Prayer Team. And that was not a one-off!

I suspect that if you invited many people in our churches to a 6 hour over-night prayer session there would not be many takers! However, the experience of the current Prayer Teams is that it's far from dull and time flies. There is a mixture of worship, praise and prayer, a general devotion of time to coming closer to God. The Street Pastor Teams may be weary when they come off the streets at 4.00 a.m., but often the Prayer Teams are zinging!

We would like, with your help, to push the Prayer Teams recruitment all through the month of February. I've attached a Word doc which can be used for notice boards or inserts in church communications – please feel free to lift text as you feel best to suit your particular church. But the real thing we would ask you to do is to speak about the recruitment from the front at services and meetings, to encourage those who may feel the call to take the first step and contact us. The existing Street Pastors volunteers, both the Street Teams and Prayer Teams, are aware of this recruitment push – if you have any within your church fellowship you could ask them to speak about the work if you feel this would help. Beyond that, if you would like either Dave Nother (who heads up the Prayer Teams) or myself to come and speak then please give us a call (Dave is on 01305-766245, whereas my (new) number is 01305-780844).

Thanks for all your support so far towards the Street Pastors initiative. We believe it is making a difference to the Town Centre environment and is breaking down barriers between the Church and the community we serve. The help you can give us on this stage of recruitment will be much appreciated.

http://www.streetpastors.co.uk/ProjectArea/South/tabid/252/~/ProjectArea/South/Weymouth/tabid/307/Default.aspx