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
Great post and good to hear about what you all have been up to.
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