Running a food bank is just a small part of Elim Leytonstone’s outreach
to its community, where it also helps people with a variety of issues

Building a ministry the community can bank on

Through Elim Leytonstone’s social care ministry, the smallest conversations and actions are making a world of difference. Chris Rolfe reports

The Muslim mother talking with the staff at Elim Leytonstone’s food bank was desperate.

Having escaped domestic violence, she still needed to free herself and her two little boys completely from her vindictive husband.

He might not have been abusing her physically any more, but he was doing all he could to ruin her life. Recently, he had registered their car in her name and then run up speeding fines that repeatedly forced her into court.

Through contacts built over the food bank’s 25-year history, staff contacted a domestic violence group whose solicitors helped the woman obtain a divorce free of charge.

She and her boys were then able to restart their lives.

This is just one of many examples Elim Leytonstone associate minister Gemma Miller shares about the church’s growing social care ministry which serves its multi-cultural East London community.

“You have people who are very well off in houses worth £800,000 plus, then others who have one room in a multiple-occupancy home,” she says. “At our food bank we serve around 120 people over two days on a quiet week and closer to 190 on others. This can equate to more than 1,400 people being fed every two weeks as many come to top up low-income budgets and extortionate rents that leave them with very little money for food.

“We’re different because we’re a self-referral food bank and anyone can walk in.

“We also let people come for three months but some continue after the initial time. That’s because if they are applying for Universal Credit they can be waiting for a minimum six weeks and living off their savings. When their money runs out what are they meant to do?”

Elim Leytonstone has seen atheists, Hindus, Jews and Muslims coming to Christ in recent months

More than food
This longer-term support has allowed the team to build relationships and learn about the situations food bank users are facing. The food bank isn’t just about feeding people, says Gemma, but engaging with them wherever they’re at.

She gives another example of an older man who couldn’t get a bank account because he had no photo ID.

“He’d survived by using the government’s energy support grant scheme for dual fuel for all his needs, with no other source of income, because he didn’t know what he could apply for.

“Nigel Collins, one of our pastors, worked with him for three months to get him a bank account, a Freedom Pass for transport and to sort out his pension. He no longer uses the food bank.”

With social action central to church life, it’s easy to drum up support from members, says Gemma, whether that’s physical or online shopping donations, food runs or staffing the food bank.

But the team aim to take this one step further by encouraging those who use the food bank to help staff it too.

“The Bible says it’s good for a person to work and find satisfaction, and we find many people who come to us need to feel like they belong and have purpose.

“Loneliness is a massive problem in a city of 8.5 million people, and volunteering here makes them part of a community.”

The benefits don’t stop there, with many food bank users and volunteers ending up coming to church and to faith.

“There are others we get to know who maybe would never step foot in a church but are happy to come to the food bank and ask us to pray with them.”

The church’s projects are all about treating people as humans and restoring their dignity

Feeling wanted
Social care is offered in other ways, too. “We have a mental health support group for people with issues themselves or people who are carers.”

The group started because one lady wanted to create a way for people to feel wanted and included in church.

“We’ve also got a lot of asylum seekers who were put in a hotel down the road. So we’ve become quite experienced at immigration law through working with them!” she adds.

The church welcomes many homeless people into its building to use its shower too. “Homeless charities working with asylum seekers will call to ask if someone can use it.

“We give them a time slot and welcome them in. Our next idea is to build a new centre with a coffee shop, launderette and shower block.

“It would have computer access for housing and job applications, the idea being that people can wash their clothes and get cleaned up to feel better, then move forward in applications for housing and work.”

Many people who come to the food bank or who are helped in other ways by the church have lost their dignity and humanity, says Gemma.

“As a church we treat them as humans and give them their dignity back.”

It all comes back to the church’s philosophy of being ‘family on a mission’, aiming as a congregation to offer social care in every aspect of church life.

“Sometimes it’s the smallest gesture that makes a difference, like sitting and having a conversation. One of my favourite memories from the past few months is of a lady who came to the food bank crying her eyes out because she’d had a week where everything went wrong. We sat down and had a bit of banter and she left saying she felt a million times lighter. ‘All you did was treat me like a human,’ she told me.

“We believe, if you can be there for your community then that’s your calling.”

This article first appeared in Direction Magazine. For further details, please click here.

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