E123 Mission House

Welcome to E123.

We are 4 women, living together in Stepney in East London. We all regularly attend different churches in East London: Bethnal Green mission church, E1 community church, Stepney Salvation Army and Victoria Park Baptist church. We are living together in a missional community. So what on earth does that mean?

It means that we are trying to live in community with one another. We are actively trying to share our lives with each other, and live together. Practically this means that we eat together, pray together, host together and generally try to become family. We do all of these things to a varying degree of success however.

It also means that we have a mission. Just like all Christians, our mission is to try and share the love, forgiveness and unfaltering welcome that Jesus offers. For all of us that looks different, but the common theme is that we are sharing this with the people of East London.

And why am I reading this?

Hopefully you’re reading this because you’re interested! And because we want to share what we are trying to do, not because we’re particularly great at doing it, but because we are interested in and passionate about this way of living.

What do we do?

If you can remember back that far, Christmas 2016 was a really busy time for our churches. All four of us were involved in carol services, nativities, social events and celebrating Christmas. As part of these celebrations, our house wanted to host a mini carol concert on our street. So with the aid of the fantastic Salvation Army brass band, litres of tea, coffee and hot chocolate, and a few mince pies, we set up outside our front door, to sing songs about the birth of Jesus. We invited as many people as we could by putting leaflets through the doors of all the houses on the surrounding streets. As we started to sing, we got a few interested passers by. A handful of neighbours came over to say hello. A few cyclists, drivers and pedestrians slowed down to listen, watch or take a photo. Curtains from the windows above were opened to see what was going on, and my personal favourite spectator was a woman at her window rocking her baby to sleep as we sang. A few of the comments that we got expressed that this sort of stuff doesn’t happen around here anymore. And this made me sad, but also convinced that being here is important, and living in the way that we do is important.

What can I do?

You can pray. Pray for a vision for the house, pray that we will be able to establish community in London (not an easy thing to do!). And you can also keep us in mind, is there anything you think we should be doing? Anything that you think we should focus on? We would love to hear from you. Email sallyarmye123@gmail.com