It was incredibly encouraging again to hear of the impact this scheme has had, with one senior officer saying “it’s worth it’s weight in gold.” The local Clinical Commissioning Group will consider the funding needed for the Alcohol Recovery Centre in our back hall, and Kingston First (the town centre managers) have spoken of their wish to provide some funding to us for Safe & Sound. All signs look promising though as a plan which was met with some scepticism in 2014 is now being touted almost as a fail safe response to a very specific and notable public need.
Any of you who were involved last year will know it’s not a fail safe by any means – it takes enormous amounts of courage and faith to get this off the ground; I’ve tweaked the plan for Safe & Sound this year to hit a couple of targets – namely, 1) to provide a richer, more attractive safe space so that more people come in just for some space and company, and 2) to spread the volunteering load in such a way as to draw other churches in and to feed more intentionally into our need to make disciples as swiftly as possible.
The dates currently being touted are as follows, with confirmation of funding for the LAS needed before we can truly hit ‘go’:
Please pray that Safe & Sound would be even more fruitful and impactful this time around! And watch this space for more info…