Street Pastors Are Go

The first Street Pastors take to the streets tonight.

I won't be with them because my shift is next week, however I will be there in spirit. It is great to see the churches working together in the centre of the town. It is also good to see that we are well supported by the politicos of the town. You can see our Tory MP supporting us, as  I said to him, this will be the first time that he as a Tory has supported Richard McKenzie a Labour man. I won't repeat what he said.

In fact the picture, borrowed from the Evening post shows all the Street Pastors that could be there that evening, with the Police and Politico's that were showing their support for us.
As a competition can you spot the Parties that didn't have Councillor or local activist representation? Clue: LD, G

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Street Pasty?

Some people know that I am training to be a Street Pastor. What is a Street Pastor? It is a group of people from the various churches around Reading, who will be going out on Friday nights to care for and calm the people enjoying Reading's night time economy.

What's this todo with Park Ward? Many of us in Reading's churches want to be involved in caring for the centre of town. Infact in one of this week's free papers was talking about the licensing committee's concerns about what goes on in the night clubs in town.

We aim to be walking around the town between 10pm and 3am on Friday night, minstering to Reading's Party goers, looking out for the vunerable and dealing with low level anti social behaviour and allow the Police to do their job. We want to show that the Church cares for all the young people and party goers in the town. I hope we will be able to do this in an open way, with humour and wit and without preaching at people.

So what will being a Street Pastor be like? Got to say I have an idea at the moment, but ask me in a couple of weeks to find out more about Street Pastors follow the attached link.

Who are the Street Pastors? They range from 25-70, men and women, and people from all sorts of backgrounds, teachers, business men and other sort of jobs.

We are having a service next week in Greyfriars to dedicate the Street Pastors, if you are about at 19.00 come along.