Ichthus Community Church

If 2007 was busy, 2008 promises to be busier still.

Highlights last year were the successful launch of both Night Shift and the Child Contact Centre, and of our website www.opendoorexmouth.org.uk. The website is bright, cheerful, and it portrays an up-beat image that reflects the positive attitude of all the team at Open Door. If you haven’t logged on yet, please do so soon. We regularly update our news so you’ll find the latest there.

Night Shift teams are settling in well as a regular feature of the Saturday night scene. The CCTV staff in particular are very supportive and value our contribution to the overall safety of the town at night. The report this year was that the New Year’s Eve celebrations were the least troublesome ever. Was that due to our presence and prayer on the streets? We like to think so!

The Child Contact Centre is winning for itself a reputation for providing a quality service. We now need to build on this and increase our profile among solicitors and with the courts. We will be renewing contacts again shortly with all interested parties and we expect to see this project grow significantly during the year. Certainly the families we have had contact with have really valued the opportunity of the safe space we provide for meeting with absent parents.

Harvest was rather different this year. Instead of food contributions, many churches and schools donated MegaBites. Over £1000 was raised, which will make a real difference to the way we can operate the scheme. Not only does it mean that we can provide more people with hot meals when they need them, but it also allows us to develop plans for an incentive scheme we’ve been working on for some time. A restructuring of menus and prices is under way in the Café and the MegaBite scheme offers us the opportunity to support individuals who engage with us on a ‘move forward’ programme. We can use MegaBites to provide a subsidy on the cost of a meal in return for an agreement to work at getting out of the situation they’re in and starting to look forward more purposefully.

Extra services inevitably mean extra costs. We ended 2007 with less in the bank than we started with but in a much healthier position than we had anticipated thanks to some very generous donations. The challenge for 2008 is to reverse this trend and part of our strategy is to build a team who will work at raising our profile and generating increased income. (If you have admin skills or fund raising experience maybe this might be something for you?) Already there are some exciting ventures on the horizon – a cycle ride from John O’Groats to Lands End, a half Marathon in Bath, and a climb up Kilimanjaro – all of which will make a real difference to our funds. But there’s still the need for long term sustainable funding and that’s something we are continuing to work hard on.

It’s all too easy to get so involved in the ‘business’ of the Open Door Centre that we can lose sight of the reason we’re doing all this. Our underlying motivation is to see the Kingdom of God extended by communicating his love to the world around us and by introducing people to the prospect of life-changing faith. That’s why we pray at all our meetings, why our Trustees are committed to upholding our Christian ethos, why every project begins each session with prayer. And that’s why we value so much the prayer support of everyone around us, especially the churches who stand with us.

Thank you for your encouragement in this and every other way you support us. If anything in this report inspires you to get involved, please let us know.