Two weeks ago we shared the story of St Mary’s Church Cottingham, who have been generously Living Christ’s Story, by supporting mission in East Hull parishes. The gift of almost £1,000 has kept growing, so that five parishes in East Hull will now receive over £250 each to support mission in their local communities.

St. Margaret's Welcome Centre on Longhill Estate in Hull is both a church and community centre. If you go on a walkabout with Rev. Trisha Wick the Pioneer Minister, you will be amazed by all links the church has in the community with schools, pubs, care homes and many of local people. Rev Trisha describes their work in the community, all of which comes under the umbrella of St Margaret’s Church.

‘We work with and serve the local community, working with local people to provide activities that they request. We also seek to develop the Christian Community on Longhill including doing church in a new way. We have a large Café, which is very popular and gives us a lot of contact with local people; we have an open door where anyone is welcome. We have a good team of 24 volunteers, and we aim to support them to develop their skills with training courses, which may help them if they seek paid employment.

The various lockdowns have disrupted our activities, but we increased our online offer, and we are delighted to welcome new people into church as we have reopened. We have looked back and assessed which of our programmes should continue and what changes we should be making. We are developing new leadership, and are looking forward to new initiatives such as two support groups - one in the Café and one online. We want to help people to recover well from the Covid challenges of the last year. We hope to start ‘Vintage Messy Church’ for older people as well as continuing with our Messy Church for families. We also aim to start a new Ladies Group.’

Dave Evans is chatting to Revd Trisha Wick outside Maggie’s Café. Dave is part of the East Hull Stepping Up group, he volunteers at St Margaret’s Longhill and you can read his story here. Dave has been using the listening skills he has learnt during Stepping Up to provide telephone support to other men in the community experiencing the isolation of lockdown.

Revd Trisha said:

‘We have suffered financially due to being closed during lockdowns so funding our activities and paying utility bills is a challenge. We are very grateful to St. Mary's Cottingham for offering us a gift, which will be used to help the new initiatives we are planning.’

This is the first example of the Mustard Seed Ambassadors programme, people from across the Diocese who have a passion to support mission in our parishes where life is tough. If you want to find out more about the Ambassadors programme please contact Heather Black, Mustard Seed Programme Leader