hosting review

Jesus our host

We began our evening with some quietness, imagining Jesus welcoming us in as the ultimate host. He says sit here on my sofa and let me take your burdens. 

Why hosting?

Next we took time to think about why we set up the hosting in the first place. In groups of 3 we thought about the main priorities for hosts. These points emerged:

• to make the prayer room easy to access. So people can just turn up, with no need for online registration.

• to welcome people. We are a community of people praying, not just a venue for prayer.

• to give information and input that will facilitate prayer, by explaining what is available in the prayer room, what the themes are, to help with rhythms of prayer during the day.

  • part of this is to be available to pray with people

• to ensure that there is a safe environment for people as they come to pray.

We also affirmed that we are not there to provide counselling or discipleship. That is for local churches.

These reflections help us keep to our core vision - we are here to encourage the Body of Christ in Southampton to pray more.

Review of recent events

We shared together two case studies from recent weeks where we spent considerable time helping someone who came for prayer. We heard from those of us involved. We listened to what had happened and how we felt about it.

We learned some lessons:

• we highly value our drop in times. We want people to be able to turn up and pray. For example, this is how Frances joined our community - she dropped in at the very beginning.

• with only two hosts on duty there are safety implications if we spend such a long time caring for someone who is upset.

• there are boundaries to what we are offering at SoHOP. For now our hospitality is focused on hosting the prayer room. We are here to help people pray. If they need more support we have to suggest it may be better for them to go home or find it elsewhere.

Future

So what will be different in future? We did not make any hard and fast rules about how we do hosting. But these are the points to carry forward:

• we are affirmed in our main aim, which is to help people spend time in God's presence praying.

• we talked about welcoming people as they come through the door, emphasizing going on into the prayer room rather than sitting in the Nona Bell and having a cup of tea. There are no rules about this, but as we host over the next months, perhaps our emphasis will change a little. (but we are still a welcoming community!!)

• we remembered our initial idea of worship on the hour and intercession on the half hour and hosts are encouraged to facilitate this with whoever is in the prayer room at these times.

• we will be more discerning about people's needs and how much time we have available to devote to individuals.

• if people are arriving looking for practical help we will use the service directory to sign post them, but not feel that we ourselves have to see their needs met. 

• if people arrive who are obviously under the influence of alcohol or drugs, we will calmly and gently explain that they are not in a fit state for the prayer room.

• some people have been arriving asking for specific people from the church who have helped them in the past. If this happens we will explain that they are not here on Saturdays and ask them to return at a time when the church is open such as Sunday morning.

• we won't be giving lifts to people we don't know.

• we cannot refer people to emergency accommodation but we will have a list of emergency numbers for e.g. mental health emergencies. 

Homelessness

What if someone arrives asking for help getting a bed for the night? The fact is, there is a system in the city for getting emergency accommodation, but we can not help people access it, we can not refer people to it. We have been told by professionals to be wise because if someone is not accessing that provision it may be because they have not behaved well within the existing system and may be a risk to others. There is a hostel, Patrick House on Millbrook Road West. We understand that if someone turns up at Patrick House, they will be given emergency support, even if it is just a sleeping bag for the night.

What about allowing them to sleep in the church? Without supervision they may be a harm to themselves or to others in the building. These things must be done safely. There is a winter relief scheme starting soon, which will provide safe sleeping in church buildings, a different church each night of the week. If our improvised efforts to accommodate homeless people go wrong it could seriously undermine the trust being established for this scheme. 

Keep talking!

If you are left with further questions and thoughts, please share them with Richard and Kathy, we are happy to hear them and keep working this through.