CR spoke with Roy Crowne

Roy Crowne

In 2008 the UK church got involved with a year of 'HOPE', birthed through a partnership between YFC, Soul Survivor and The Message Trust. HOPE was intended to be a catalyst for local churches to live out mission through doing more, together, and communicating the Gospel in both words and actions. In 2012 HOPE continues to help bring unity in the church and change to local communities. To find out about their plans for 2012 Sarah J spoke with Roy Crowne the Executive Director of HOPE.

Sarah J: What is HOPE all about?

Roy: Hope's a great word isn't it? We live in a society that's desperate for hope. HOPE came out of an initiative with three youth organisations; Youth For Christ, Message Trust in Manchester and Soul Survivor. We just said, could we bring hope to some of the most broken places in our culture through word and deed and work together with the church to bring about transformation in our communities? HOPE is working with the whole church.

We brought all the youth agencies together that work for the church and they've invited us to look at areas of the country where we could mobilize young people to do something together within their cities. In Cardiff they've already recruited 258 young people to do a project transforming the city in May this year. We're now talking to Cornwall and Leicester and we're saying to them, how across this whole region we could mobilise young people do something around a weekend or where they come together for teaching, go out in the afternoon and then do some sort of coffee bar and some gospel presentation in the evening and that's gaining momentum. We'd love every region of the country to have a youth stream that was doing something HOPE wise as well as the adults embracing it.

Sarah J: I should imagine that the government is also quite excited about that because they are campaigning for young people to be engaged in sowing back into communities through voluntary work.

Roy: They are. We're having conversation with them, because they're looking at doing something this year around harvest and we're saying we could do something with harvest, because I'd love to put harvest back into the church's agenda; where we show the generosity and thankfulness of God. Young people could actually do some stuff around the half term week in October. We did one last year in Cambridge but we could do something going forward as well.

Sarah J: When HOPE launched in 2008 what kind of projects and initiatives happened at grass roots level to bring HOPE to broken communities?

Roy: Well there were about 1,500 projects throughout that year that were as diverse as the culture we live in. In Devon they decided to do cream teas in the villages right across the county and it caught the imagination of a village; churches coming together, Methodist, Baptist, Anglican saying let's do a cream tea for our village on this day just to serve our community. They wanted to do something together and then tell them what the Christian faith is all about. Then there was another massive initiative in the city of Cardiff, where they mobilised 300 young people and they went into some of the most deprived areas of Cardiff and cleaned up those areas, put on coffee bars in the evening and then communicated the gospel. In one community they came for about seven days and on the sixth day one of the kids was heard saying to her Mum when they turned up on their mini buses and coaches, "Mum the Christians are coming" and there was just a whole emphasis of what God could do if we embrace communities, serve them with acts of kindness and some specific task and communicate the gospel.

Sarah J: Are you talking about cleaning up a neighbourhood with things like litter picking, painting and clearing up any graffiti?

Roy: Yes. There's one particular project that's going on now where they get referrals from the council. HOPE Nottingham gets referrals from council and somebody goes and does a pastoral visit then sends in a team often with older couples and does the decorating for them in their lounge and just serves that family or that couple and then they become part of the church community.

Sarah J: You've mentioned that lots of different churches have got behind this particular campaign and more recently there's been a group of church leaders that have come together particularly to sign a declaration to endorse HOPE haven't they?

Roy: Yes. The goal is to mobilise the whole church. One group that is in many places around the country is the Churches Together group. We approached the president of Churches Together and we asked the president whether they would sign up to a year of mission in 2014 where all of their streams would be part of it. At that declaration was the Archbishop of Canterbury, Vincent Nicholls the Catholic Archbishop, the Free Church president, the Quakers, Elim, Baptist and Methodist. All of those people said yes we'll sign a declaration to say that we really want the whole church to work together in word and deed mission around the country. It was an amazing moment because it was held at Jesus House in London, where Pastor Ague was hosting the presidents gathering.

Sarah J: You've got plans for 2012 as well haven't you, because this year is a really big deal for the UK with the Olympics and also the Queen's Diamond Jubilee? What have you got planned for that?

Roy: I think 2012 is an amazing year of opportunity. You probably know that a group called the Big Lunch had been running these lunches around the country, well there's a church in Twickenham that has run the Big Lunch and they've seen 50% growth in their local church as a result of doing this lunch within the community because it builds relationships. You eat together and you just become a community through that lunch event. When there was a lot of interest in looking at the Queen, she said I would love three or four million people to have lunch on Sunday 3rd June and we just thought that's a great opportunity for the church to be involved at the heart of their communities. I mean we do lunch, we do food, we've got the knives and forks, we've got the tables and chairs, we've got everything. Let's put it out in the community and the Queen is inviting us to do this and we will come up with some community programmes; we'll come up with some lesson materials; we'll come up with some dramas where the schools could get involved and deliver something. You'd have a real community feel, but rather than communities just doing that and the church doing it's own thing, let's put the church right at the centre of that on that Sunday when she wants it to happen, the 3rd June 2012. It will be kind of the launch of going into the Olympics in the summer too. Then we're doing a harvest resource for the autumn for a whole year where the church will build those relationships into the community, because we're treated with suspicion and we tend to do our own thing and so we thought, let's not do that this year; let's be right at those community festivities and share our faith there.

Sarah J: When you speak about bringing hope to communities what do you mean?

Roy: I think hope for me is a great Christian word; of all people in society, we should be people of hope. The reason for that very simply is we have relationship with God who is the God of all hope and says it's not just what you see down here; it's not just what you see in your community. It may be desperate. It may be really bad, but in your heart you can know that that is not all there is. There's something more and because of that you can be a person of hope; not to ignore what's going on around you, but to bring that hope to people. We can say yeah it may be bad here but there's some good news and the good news is that Jesus can encounter you now and bring hope to that brokenness or that pain, but know that there is future and because there's a future that brings hope into the present.

Sarah J: If people wanted to find out more about HOPE and get involved how can they do that?

Roy: Go to our website which is www.hopetogether.org.uk or you can phone us on 01788 542782, or email us at information@hopetogether.org.uk.