Custody Chaplains

A town centre chaplaincy in Weston Super Mare has been invited into a new venture by the local police:

The latest step has come at the request of the Police for us to provide a team of ChAt (Chaplaincy About Town) Custody Chaplains to visit any detainee at Weston-super-Mare Police Station. After months of planning and training the team, which includes both ChAt Chaplains and Street Pastors, the project was finally operational on 16 April 2012. We went to Weston Police Station for the launch at 8.00am. Before 8.30am the first detainee asked for support and I was in a cell! Less than an hour later, the detainee, who had been held for most of the night, was focussed and calm, had a plan to seek professional help on returning home, and was in a much better state of mind for the police interview.  

We have these encounters at a crucial point in the life of an offender, a time of regret, remorse, shame, and a time of longing to make life-changing decisions. Through good listening and signposting the person is empowered, lives can be transformed and new beginnings made.

We come to every listening session with faith that three people are present – the speaker, the listener and God; it is His presence and peace in the session which makes these encounters different from those with other professional aid agencies.

With the Custody Chaplains as a pilot scheme in Weston-super-Mare, the Police hope it may be possible for the service to be offered in other custody suites in the Avon and Somerset area in due course.

Read the rest of it here, as told by Lead Chaplain Gill Putnam. Weston was the first place in Somerset to pilot Street Pastors, and it's good to see them pioneering this. 

Street Pastors, Crime and Community

We hosted a Street Pastors commissioning at the weekend, 6 new SP's for Yeovil, and more prayer pastors too. We had reps from the local police and council there, reinforcing the partnership model that Street Pastors works with. There's now over 300 Street Pastor projects around the country, with over 9000 volunteers in action.

A couple of things struck me on the night:

1. A local police inspector told us that crime in the town centre had fallen 27% since the Street Pastors had started work. That's brilliant. It's partly through the Street Pastors heading off incidents (picking up glass which could be used as weapons, keeping lairy gangs away from each other), and partly through SP's dealing with low-level stuff, thus freeing up the police to do their job more effectively.

2. The deputy mayor gave the main address, which included this conclusion:
For the New Pastors…
The role is not about preaching heaven and hell, but one of listening - caring and helping - working in an unconditional and practical way, engaging with all people no matter Who or What they are.

For the Church…
God is challenging the Church to be a powerful catalyst for social action and Street Pastors are helping the Church to do just that. It is a must for church leaders and believers to reach their communities with a message of love and hope.

I'm mulling on that last bit, how to mobilise the whole church to be agents of change and hope in our communities. We had a few examples of that to show to our 2 local bishops, who visited last week, but there's still a sense that we're just scratching the surface.

Vote For Yeovil Street Pastors

Yeovil Street Pastors have put in for a £6000 grant from a Natwest Community fund, but we need a few folk to vote for the bid for it to have a chance of being succesful. Please go here to support.  Thankyou.

'Christian Nightlife' conference

The whole idea of Christian Nightlife sends all sorts of weird images scurrying across my head: gangs of elderly ladies roaming the streets being nice to strangers, vicars attempting to dance to Delirious, etc. But seriously....

A message from the Christian Night-life Initiatives - ‘Community Transformation within the Night-Time Economy’ Conference - Wednesday 7th July 2010

In January, it was announced that Bedford would be hosting the second National Christian Nightlife Initiatives on Wednesday 7th July from 10.00am - 3.30pm at the Bedford Salvation Army, MK40 1QS.

The conference will be exploring how Christian night-life projects can create create community transformation. Our morning keynote speaker will be Steve Clifford, General Director of the Evangelical Alliance. Steve Clifford worked as a teacher in the 1980s before taking up full-time church leadership in 1985. He has been long been involved in church planting, running leadership and discipleship teams, and enabling networks. He has served as Chair of many key evangelical initiatives, including Soul Survivor, Hope 08, Soul in the City, London and of March for Jesus International.

After lunch, we will be joined by Andy Turner, the Director of XChange from the Church Urban Fund.

A full programme for the conference is available for download from the new CNI network - www.cninetwork.org.uk

Should be relevant to things like Street Pastors, Street Angels etc. Ht Start the Week.

'Independent' piece on Street Pastors

Seem to be linking to a lot of stuff at the Indy these days:

An increasingly familiar sight in Britain's towns and cities, the inter-denominational band of Christians are on an inner-city pilgrimage to do God's work, armed not with Bibles, but with sick bags, flip flops and first aid. The organisation was set up in London in 2003 by the Rev Les Isaacs as an outreach project to tackle the gang, gun and knife culture he saw in Lewisham and Hackney.

But now its remit is changing. The number of Street Pastor groups has increased dramatically in the past 12 months, with night-time patrols established in 30more towns and cities, bringing the UK total to more than 150. These days the organisation is as much about caring for drunken revellers as it is about separating warring youth gangs.

...At half past 10, we gather between Coyote Wild Nightclub and Vodka Revolution. A mob of barely dressed girls totter forward, seemingly primed to unleash a salvo of teenage derision. Their leader is 17-year-old Bethany Ward, who seems remarkably blasé about declaring her age in front of a row of bouncers, and she is all admiration. "I just wanted to say that these guys are legends," she squeals. "When my mate was puking up the other weekend they gave them water and put them in a taxi. They don't shout at you like your parents do."

Reading the whole piece is probably enough to put any sane person off having a night out in Derby.

Les Isaacs Interview

Very powerful interview with Les Isaacs, founder of Street Pastors, on Radio 4 yesterday. It's quite powerful to find a bloke in contact with so much violence and darkness, who at the same time is so hopeful and optimistic about how people can change.

Had the first session of training for our new intake of Street Pastors yesterday, 17 of them from 8 different churches, plus input from the Mayor of Yeovil and the beat manager for the town centre. Very positive morning, and it looks like we've got enough (44) to do Friday and Saturday evenings every week from the spring.

Here's my attempt to embed the interview:

There's Probably No Street Pastors, Now Stop Vomiting and Get Home by Yourself

Hands up who thinks this is a 'success':

I thought I would provide a small success story Westminster Unison had regarding Street Pastors, which were nearly introduced at Westminster City Council. Following a complaint made by myself, and a letter to Newsline, outlining the reasons why a local authority should not pay for the Ascension Trust, an evangelical Christian group, to patrol the streets, I was informed this week that Westminster has now withdrawn the proposal.

or this a 'victory'

After some persistence on my part, however, the Council undertook something called an Equalities Impact Assessment, which had to acknowledge the fact that, under the aims of the scheme Street Pastors could only be recruited from "individuals with a Christian Faith" and was also only open to those "whose relationship lifestyle is in keeping with mainstream Christian teaching" – i.e. no gays or lesbians, thank you.

I have just received confirmation from a slightly embarrassed Council official that the scheme will receive no further public funding, and wanted to share with your readership a small, but satisfying, victory against the encroachment of religion into public life. I would even go out on Friday night to celebrate, but the Street Pastors are still out there after my soul.

I'm caught between bewilderment and boiling blood at the sheer short-sightedness of this 'secularism at any cost' approach. The real losers will be the clubbers, who SP's are there to look out for, help where needed, and be a listening ear for. The police and emergency services jobs will get a little bit harder too. In both cases there'll probably be enough financial support from the churches to make up the difference, but there are obviously some very odd ideas out there of what the Pastors do.

In the last few months I've heard of young children found sleeping rough by SP's on a Saturday night who were got back home, someone else who was about to commit suicide who talked it through with some Street Pastors and changed their mind, fights avoided, vulnerable women protected from people trying to bundle them into cars, you name it. These are the people Street Pastors help.

At the same time if someone asks why we're doing it, they'll get an honest answer. That gives all sorts of opportunities for people to sound off about God, get into deep theological argument, or walk away - and that's completely up to them. At no point is there any attempt to evangelise or exploit people who are slightly worse for wear. If there was, the police would quite rightly tell us to go back home. As it is, police in several areas are actively inviting the local churches to set up Street Pastor initiatives, as it's recognised that they do some good.

So what's the problem? That if a group is motivated by their faith to do something of public benefit, then it shouldn't get any funding. You can be motivated by anything else, and we won't complain, but we can't have Christians doing good, because, well, they're Christians. And? We have a night shelter for the homeless in Yeovil, originally set up by Christians, now passed on to other leadership. And the Lords Larder, which gives out hundreds of food parcels in partnership with Social Services - the clue is in the name. Both work in partnership with secular agencies, and have received support from non-church sources. Does the council have to wait for agnostic charities to set up before it's allowed to fund them, or can it support positive action no matter who does it, or whether or not they are motivated by some kind of faith?

Perhaps the problem is the conviction that there must be an ulterior motive. That wouldn't be unreasonable - every other stranger who acts friendly is usually a salesman or a Scientologist. The church itself sometimes gets in a muddle over 'friendship evangelism' - friends are not friends if they're just people you are getting to know so you can invite them to church. So that suspicion is understandable. And of course if clubbers show some interest in the Christian faith, they'll be encouraged in that. A comparison: our local MP and councillors all represent political parties. They'll work on behalf of constituents of any political conviction, but if those constituents show signs of supporting the LibDems, or whoever, then that will be encouraged, but the help isn't made conditional on people's political viewpoints. Same with Street Pastors - the help isn't conditional, but enquiries are welcomed.

There are clearly a lot of myths about Street Pastors doing the rounds, so lets nail a few:
- SP's main aim is to be a pastoral presence on the streets, to look out for and help the vulnerable where appropriate. They are not 'after your soul'.

- We work in partnership with the police and council, and involve the police in the (quite intensive) training, which all SP's must complete. That includes drug awareness, conflict management, alcohol awareness, youth culture, probation, child protection etc.

- There is no attempt to 'get people when they're vulnerable'. If folk want to talk about God, the SP's are happy to listen. But there's no preaching. The proof of this is simply to see what happens where SP's are in operation - if they were going round Bible bashing people, most clubbers would either run a mile or beat them up. As well as being extremely bad practice, it would be self-defeating. We'd also not have any Street Pastors, as nobody would sign up to that sort of job description.

- People know what we stand for, it's no secret that these are people from the churches, so there's nothing covert or underhand going on.

- The point of the uniforms is so that SP's are recognisable, that there's some 'brand recognition' that these are safe people who'll look after you and make sure you're ok. There's some suggestion that SP's make too much of what they do, and that proper Christians would do it in secret. Fair point, but the uniforms are very helpful - ask anyone else who wears one as part of their work. A complete stranger with no identification turning up to 'help' a group of clubbers would be pretty suspicious.

- Each SP commits to raising the money (around £300 for training, uniforms, etc.) themselves, many are supported by churches, but we find that the local community/agencies want to support the initiative as well. We had one grant in Yeovil from a local councillor who decided to apply on our behalf. If that support is available, then great - the fact that SP's is primarily a Christian charity shouldn't prevent local authorities and agencies from supporting it. The British Humanist Association recently got a grant from national government, but not many people are suggesting they pay it back.

- SP's will deal equally with everyone they come across: male, female, gay, straight, drunk, sober etc. etc.

Meanwhile here is a long list of the awards that SP's have recieved from local communities who appreciate what they do, and here is an account from an Essex MP of what Street Pastors do in Chelmsford. Simon Burns MP quotes the following statistics:

In Lewisham there was a 30% reduction in street crime in the first 13 weeks that they were operating, in Camberwell a 95% reduction and in Peckham 74%. In Chelmsford they have made an immediate and significant impact.

a few other links
positive noises here on ConservativeHome.
Derby police nominate local SP's for award.
SP's praised by police for bringing down crime in Kingston.
Home Office paper which mentions Street Pastors as an example of good public sector/charity partnership in community safety.
Example of what's going on in Taunton, where they offer a 'safe space' for folk to wait for friends and taxis, and recover from a heavy night in a safe place, rather than in a hedge.
Good explanation of the SP ethos in this BBC Scotland report.
SP's in Bridgend praised by police and welcomed by the council.

and so on...

I don't have the stats for Yeovil yet, but we were told by the town centre beat manager a couple of weeks ago that recorded crime had been steadily dropping on a Saturday night since the Street Pastors started up here, and they're very keen for us to do Friday's too. We've just interviewed about 17 applicants to join the team, and hopefully will start doing Friday and Saturday nights from the spring of 2010.

We could run Street Pastors without funding from the council - it would make the £300 fee a bit tougher for some of the folk who do it, but many of them would probably manage to raise it anyway. Even without the funding, we want to do it in partnership with the council and the police, because that's what works best. And local councillors around the UK clearly see it as something worth supporting. Some people may be opposed in principle to anything done by Christians, but there's not much we can do about that except say: come and see what really happens, and then make up your mind.

Final point: it's been argued that Street Pastors should let folk of any faith or none sign up. In some places this happens - there are 'street angel' projects in several towns. However, it seems a little bizarre to insist that if Christians want to get together to do something of benefit to the public, that they have to let anyone else join in. Surely the important thing is that the benefit is open to all, rather than the membership.

It's a positive thing that Christians want to do this, and do it in partnership with the police and the local authority. That partnership is healthier than forcing the church to go it alone, and freezing it out of any partnership because we're motivated by a set of values and beliefs that some other people don't agree with. Even if your vision is of a secular society, that vision will only work if people with faith and people without it are able to live and work together.

PS Blogger comments has gone a bit weird, I keep getting error messages during the review process, so they may take a bit of time to appear.

Street Pastors - the Blessing of Boris

Nice story in Christian Today about the Street Pastors national conference this week, addressed by Boris Johnson.

He said: “We can’t just transform the physical infrastructure because that’s not what really counts. What counts is the human capital of London.
“It’s the young people of London that we need to invest in if this city is to lengthen its lead as the greatest city on Earth.

“Street Pastors are already doing what you can and I think it is high time London knew more about what you did and the whole of London followed your example.”

Mr Johnson admitted that red tape was making it “too difficult to do good” for many organisations, including Street Pastors, but said he had no difficulty with Christian organisations sharing their faith through their work.

“Faith groups who want to slip in the odd cogent message in favour of salvation, I have absolutely no problem with that. Why not!” he quipped.

“That’s one of the things I think has been going wrong in the last few years – we’ve got a slightly politically correct super-sensitivity to anything remotely cast as religious advocacy. I’ve got no difficulty with it whatsoever.”

We've had getting on for 20 applications to be Street Pastors in our second intake, which could take our numbers up towards the 50 mark, enabling us to do both Friday and Saturday nights, but we'll have to see how the interviews go first.

What we need alongside them is prayer pastors - we already have a dedicated group of folk who pray from 10pm - 4am on Saturday nights, we just need a few more!

Coming Soon to a Street Pastor near you

The latest Saturday night fashion accessory. Such has been the demand for flip flops by people in failed stilletoes that the Ascension Trust, the Street Pastors charity, has taken to producing their own. And here they are.

There's lots of other inspiring stuff on the SP site, including this list of the awards SP's have recieved from their local communities. Here's a picture of our lovely Yeovil team, one of well over 100 now in operation. We're hoping to recruit a few more, so that we can patrol Friday nights as well as Saturdays, so if you're local and know someone who might be interested, then Friday 16th October, 7.30pm at Yeovil Baptist Church is the place to be.

Gold Star Awards

A couple of local church groups are up for the Gold Star Awards in Yeovil tomorrow night at the Octagon. It's an evening hosted by the local council to recognise volunteers with young people in the local community.

Sadly I'm otherwise engaged, the 'champagne reception' sounds quite tempting. Look forward to hear how Street Pastors and the Urban Warriors (local youth ministry) get on. Congratulations to all involved in those two projects, it's great to see the church involved in stuff that scratches where people are actually itching, rather than where we think they should be itching.

Street Pastors credited with 25% crime reduction

Very encouraging to read this:

A message from:
Deputy Chief Constable Tony Melville
Devon & Cornwall Constabulary
‘Torquay is a busy environment, it's a busy town, and of course it has a vibrant busy night-time economy, particularly by the harbour. We want people to enjoy the facilities there, but the challenge we have been experiencing is high levels of crime.

I researched crime statistics during a 6 month period, and do you know what I found?
During the 6 month period when Torbay Street Pastors had been operating, I compared it with the year before - the same 6 months - over that very busy summer period.

What I found was that violent crime had fallen by a quarter , in fact during that 6 month period when Street Pastors had been operating, no robberies had taken place at all in Torquay city centre. (my italics)

We had one fifth less burglaries from homes.

Vehicle crime had fallen by a quarter. All in that very focussed area where Street Pastors had been out on the streets working.

Now these are impressive reductions in crime by anybody's standard, and that's one of the reasons we are so supportive of Street Pastors.'

Feet and Knees

Had the privilege of putting someone elses shoes and socks on for them today, so that they could come home from hospital. It wasn't planned like that, but it was a bit of a Maundy Thursday moment.

Jesus washes the disciples feet, then tells them to copy him. Why?

- Because you can only wash feet on your knees. And that's where you pray. What we are on our knees before God, that is what we are and nothing else.

- On your knees you get to look into the faces of those who can't stand, and the faces of children. You can't do that if you're standing up.

- Washing feet gives service the priority over status. Jesus doesn't care about his reputation, and Christians shouldn't care about their reputation either.

- Washing feet is love in action. We have songs and words galore about love, but God so loved the world that he gave: he did something. There's an article in todays local paper about the launc of Yeovil's new Street Pastors team - several of those interviewed say how good it is that someone is doing something, rather than just talking about doing something.

Street Pastors

It’s not everyone’s idea of the perfect night out. Why would any sensible person pay £300 up front to walk the streets in the small hours of Saturday morning, cleaning up drunks and handing out blankets?

This weekend we’re interviewing 30 people who want to be Street Pastors in Yeovil. The local police have been on at us for a while to get started, so training begins in a fortnight, with patrols starting in early April. The aim is to be out from 10pm to 3 or 4am every week, if we have enough suitable volunteers.

Concerned about crime, drugs and guns amongst local youth in London, inner city pastor Les Isaac set up the first Street Pastor unit in 2003. The idea was to be a listening, serving presence on the streets at the most dangerous time of the week. Six years later there are now well over 2000 Street Pastors in the UK, a number which increased by 45% in 2008.

This is neither a bunch of naive Christian do-gooders, nor is it anything spectacular. The Pastors give out flip-flops as a safe alternative to broken stilletoes, talk to revellers who’ve been separated from their friends and get them back together, chat with gangs who might otherwise spark something off, pick broken glass off the pavement (potential weapon, or potential hospital trip if you step on ot barefoot), and simply sit and listen.

One man was hauled out of the path of a bus, another had collapsed unconscious in a dark alley on a winters night and was found a blanket and taxi home, a better end to the night than hypothermia or mugging.

Volunteers range from 18 to 80, with grannies being especially popular, and in 6 years none has ever been injured. Where police intervention might escalate a situation, the Pastors are seen as friends.

Does it Work?

Street Pastors are up and running in over 60 centres in the UK, from Peckham to Plymouth, Aberdeen to Melton Mowbray, plus the majority of London boroughs (”extraordinary and inspiring” Boris Johnson).

Local reports from police suggest that, in place after place, crime has fallen where Street Pastors are working. In one London study:

data provided by the Police show that in two different crime hotspot areas of London (Peckham and Camberwell) the work of Street Pastors have brought remarkable reductions in the number of crimes. A nine-month police evaluation included comparing the rates for two consecutive annual 13-week periods, that saw a 95% fall in one area and a 74% fall in the other.

Here’s one first-hand account:

When I agreed to do some reporting in the early hours of ‘nasty Friday’, the last Friday before Christmas on which drunken revellers cause havoc in city centres, I thought I might see some vomit, one or two twisted ankles - at worst, a bloody nose from a drunken punch.

Little did I know that, by one o’clock, I would be on my knees in the middle of a busy North London road, attending to a man who was critically ill after somebody stamped on his head stamped during a violent brawl.

the perspective of one police officer in the Midlands:
“On the Saturday night there were two men talking to each other, calming down after an argument, and a third man talking to a street pastor. By speaking to the street pastor that man didn’t get involved with the others and didn’t aggravate the situation. His view was that if he hadn’t engaged with the street pastor he would have got involved. That’s one less violent crime to deal with.

And a few comments from the folk they talk to:
“I’m happy to know they’re on the street. They’re like a little boost.”

“What a brilliant idea… they are the peaceful people on the streets.”
“They gave me a pair of flip-flops and saved me a lot of pain.”

What’s the Catch?
Why do they do it? There’s no pay, little sleep, and a big sacrifice of time and money. The short answer is ‘compassion’.

A slightly longer answer may be in this piece by Roy Hattersley, not himself a Christian, which notes that Christian faith motivates people to compassion in a way which nothing else does. He writes:

Civilised people do not believe that drug addiction and male prostitution offend against divine ordinance. But those who do are the men and women most willing to change the fetid bandages, replace the sodden sleeping bags and - probably most difficult of all - argue, without a trace of impatience, that the time has come for some serious medical treatment. Good works, John Wesley insisted, are no guarantee of a place in heaven. But they are most likely to be performed by people who believe that heaven exists.

The correlation is so clear that it is impossible to doubt that faith and charity go hand in hand.

No matter what the adverts say, there are people out on a Saturday night who are worrying less and enjoying life more because of people who do believe in God. From the earliest years of Christianity, when believers would stay behind in plague cities to bury the dead and tend the sick long after everyone else had fled, Christian faith has had unrivalled power to motivate acts of service and love. Sure, you don’t need to be a Christian to care sacrificially, but it certainly helps.

St. Francis of Assisi is quoted as saying “preach the gospel, use words if necessary”. Maybe the best answer to Richard Dawkins is not complaints to the Advertising Standards Authority, but just normal people showing an abnormal amount of concern for others.

this post originally appeared on Touching Base, a regular column hosted by the Wardman Wire

Street Pastors in Yeovil

Great to see the possibility of Street Pastors happening in Yeovil getting nearer to reality. The local police have been asking the church for a while to get this started, and our launch event is:

Tues 2nd December, 7.30pm in the Gateway, Yeovil.

Our prayer is to recruit around 50 people, to start sending teams of 4 onto the streets at the weekends in Yeovil from early summer 2009, starting the training at the end of January.

What are Street Pastors?
Teams of Christians taking to the streets on Friday and Saturday evenings to show the love of God in action. Street Pastors are a Christian presence in the weekend club and pub scene, offering practical help and a listening ear. They protect the vulnerable, bless strangers, and provide thousands of people with a visible expression of God’s love.

How's it being organised?
Churches in Yeovil are working together to make Street Pastors a reality in our town. There is a Management Group drawn from 4 local churches, and many others are supporting it. However, it needs help at lots of other levels:

- We need 40-50 people who are willing to offer 1 night a month in order to run Street Pastors every week.
- it costs £300 per person to train a Street Pastor, so we're looking for finance to help with those costs. Great to here at the weekend that a Somerset County Councillor for the area was putting in a substantial bid for funding for us, after having a chat with the local police.
- admin help: there will (we hope) be a lot of applications to process, and it takes quite a lot of backroom work to liase with 20 local churches, and administer a course with 50 attendees (who all need to be CRB checked, and have applications processed), and a variety of tutors and venues.

The Bigger Picture
Street Pastors are administered nationally by the Ascension Trust, and there's lots of stuff about them on the web:

- Video
Lincoln street pastors (7m, very comprehensive, we showed it a church this morning)
Kingston (London)
Aberdeen

News reports & features
BBC news
BBC 1xtra
BBC Somerset
Daily Telegraph
Times

Leaflets & info from local groups
Swindon
Taunton newsletter - group here launched in May
Manchester

there is news about local groups on the main Street Pastors website, and you can look for groups in your area.

or just Google Street Pastors - there are probably over 50 local groups, or people doing something very similar under a very similar name (!)

Quotes
“As a member of the Christian Police Association and a serving officer I not only believe this will assist the police in tackling this problem but will demonstrate real Christian concern and practical support for those who find themselves involved in gangs and gun crime.”
Chief Supt. Neil Wain, Greater Manchester Police

“There are many young people who feel excluded by society. Street Pastors takes practical hope to the pavement for these individuals.”
Joel Edwards, General Director, Evangelical Alliance UK

“It’s absolutely fantastic, the job the Street Pastors are doing.” David Cameron

“extraordinary and inspiring” Boris Johnson

“I’m not scared of going out on the streets” (Peter, aged 80, new Street Pastor in Sutton. The oldest Street Pastor is 86)

If you want to get involved in Yeovil Street Pastors, send me a comment or email, or email yeovil (at) streetpastors (dot) org (dot) uk. There are leaflets in most local churches in the Yeovil area (and if you've run out, ask us for more!) and most should be displaying posters about the launch event. Best of all, come on the 2nd December, find out more, pray and sign up!

Street Pastors in Yeovil?

Had a Street Pastors meeting today - see the clip above for a flavour of what they are, or visit here for video clips from other parts of the country. A few jottings

- Street Pastors started in 2003, in Brixton, with 18 volunteers. There are now over 1000, with Street Pastors up and running in dozens of centres (most recently Taunton), and 15 others exploring it.

- the age range of Street Pastors is 18-76, and the 76 year old is very effective!

- 160 new Street Pastors per year are being trained in London alone, and the chief of the Met has asked the charity who oversee it (Ascension Trust), whether they can roll it out to the remaining London boroughs who dont yet have SP's in operation. The training is 12 full days, which sounds a lot but makes sure the folk who do it know how to handle situations, and can be trusted.

- The general idea is to be a presence in town centres on Friday/Saturday nights, during the time when there's most going on, to look out for the vulnerable, listen to people, and show the love of Jesus in action. The police are very keen on it, and in Lincoln, the first 6 months of Street Pastors saw crime fall by 7.5%. Local businesses and town centre managers are keen too, as they see the benefits on making town centres safer and a more pleasant place to be.

There are other positive reports in the Sunday Telegraph (including some glowing quotes from David Cameron and Boris Johnson), and on the BBC.

It sounds an ideal thing to be supporting here in Yeovil, and there was a briefing for police and community leaders after the church leaders meeting this morning. Watch this space.