In Praise of Volunteers, Your Learning, Coventry Jesus Centre

You’ve got to have a team if you really want to achieve most things in life and ours is a fine one:

Ann, the first to arrive

Monday morning ... Ann’s already here (we call her Ann-Lifted-Up as God lifts up the lowly). In fact, she’s been here since 6am and she’s no youngster; she was a cleaner in her working life and now she does it for free in her retirement. Seriously, she’s already been cleaning the loos, emptying the bins, generally making the place look smart.

Do you think it’s important? Unquestionably, yes. She’s gone by 8:30am but left her mark behind. We pray together as she goes and you know, I value her prayers highly

Matthew and Mark ... but no Luke and John

as she prays for God’s blessing on everyone that enters the Jesus Centre doors this Monday morning.


Then there’s Matt and Mark who come in at 8.00am. Matt’s already met me on the way and tells me he’s left his warm flat to come and assist. They do a great job of moving chairs and tables until the hall looks just fine, set up for the day’s classes and, meanwhile, I can get on with the photocopying. Yes, and I won't forget Pete, he's often here too.

Peter .. another noteworthy disciple

Then Jo and Betty appear. Now, they are
my assistants in the class and I couldn’t do without them. They just appear every week,  consistently, and obviously enjoy what they do; that helps. I always think, if we who lead enjoy our sessions and convey that enjoyment, the learners can’t fail to follow.

  Last of all Karen appears; she helps me in the afternoon session; she’s brilliant with the lads, flexible with a great sense of humour (definitely needed at times) and unfailing in her commitment. She’s great on the clearing up too: you know, those unwashed cups and boundless pieces of paper to tidy up; I’ve never learned to work in a tidy manner and spread out everywhere. Everyone like me needs a Karen. 

Betty and Jo

Yes, and the number is growing .... the Bablake girls, Sarah and Shirin are the most recent additions to the team!

Last but not least, Karen

John and James jostled to be first, forefront leaders. Jesus told them they’d got it all wrong. The most humble, the most servant-hearted are greatest in the kingdom of heaven. I think that of our volunteers.

Syrian Refugees: A Boy with a Gun and a Mother Bereft (Life at Coventry Jesus Centre)

Sometimes the bottom corner of a curtain is held up for a brief while and, peering through, we glimpse another world, parallel to ours, filled with scenes of horror and devastation -  humanity at its lowest ebb.

This week it’s Syria. On Wednesday morning a young Syrian came in with a friend and sat down quietly in class. We were making pancakes and got chatting; we talked trivia: lemons and pancake mix and migrated to fruits grown in Syria. He began showing me photos on his mobile of his village back home: acres of smiling vineyards and tidy olive groves; it looked a fertile, sunny place with no signs of the bloody conflict. He looked at the photos with fondness and explained that his family had a smallholding in the village.

Flicking through his pictures, we passed family members, old men dressed in traditional Syrian headgear and then ... a young and handsome dark-haired boy, no more than nine, with a cheeky, boyish grin holding - a birthday present? You would have been justified in thinking so, looking at the cheerful look on his face. Sadly, no. He was clutching a large gun.  ‘Our country’, my Syrian friend muttered and swiftly flicked onto the next picture. 

I don’t know who the boy was; I didn’t want to ask. It was a Syrian boy and his picture told a story, a story of an unfolding tragedy, a spoilt boyhood, a conflict of adults where innocents are dragged in and learn far too quickly ‘the art’ of maiming and killing. 

Syrian refugees in Egypt

The previous day I had visited our food bank and met another asylum seeker from Syria who arrived in the UK in 2011 and has not been given leave to remain; all her appeals have been refused and she thinks she may have to leave the country soon. She was in desperate need of a food parcel.  She first arrived in Norway in 2009 with her four children but two of them, aged 18 and 16, were deported to Syria. “I have no contact with my two eldest children in Syria,” she says. “Syria is a warzone. I don’t know where they are.  I went to the Red Cross and they told me that they could only help me trace them if I gained status as a UK citizen.”

I’m struck by her dignity and courage in the face of loss and in the struggle for survival. I asked her to come back when she has time and I will help her draft a letter to her MP – the least I can do. 

Sometimes we can’t do much more than listen; sometimes there are small practical ways we can help – food bank for instance – or help write a letter. I offered to pray for her; she clutched my hands; we prayed that somehow God would find some way, a miracle, in providing a safe home for her and her two remaining children and a way to finding her lost children  – and do you think her heart was in that prayer?  

Sometimes, I think, listening is one of the most important, most effective activities we can ever engage in ... followed by prayer.