Being Ourselves and Joining in
Our last blog featured the powerful example of being called to action to seek justice in our community. Living out our Christian values in the community brings our faith to life and makes it real.
This fourth ECFC blog looks at the ECFC value of ‘Being Ourselves and Joining in’.
At the end of a busy shift managing Baraka Café, Clare took a few minutes out from clearing up the kitchen with her team and she came to speak about how the café on the one hand relies on what it receives from our community and on the other hand gives back to everyone involved. Baraka sustains the community with its essential vibe and its delicious food. Everything served with love and care, not least the training of its ever-evolving cohesive team of volunteers receiving structured kitchen training to bolster their CVs.
Clare spoke about the ECFC value of Joining in and Being ourselves:
Joining in at Baraka Cafe
“In terms of ‘joining in’, we depend on volunteers and customers. The volunteers and the community is what makes Baraka possible. It includes joining in through prayer for the volunteers and for everything in the surrounding community. There’s a million ways you can join in. Even if you can’t physically join in by participating as a customer, even if you can’t participate by volunteering, you can participate by buying someone a pay it forward meal. You can participate by praying. When you look at the body of Christ and the community everyone has different gifts and ways that they can join in. So you might physically be able to come in and wash up, you might be able to donate a little bit. You might be able to pray. And everybody can pray. You can join in through other opportunities like driving.”
Being yourself at Baraka
Clare continues:
“The being yourself is covered in the fact that everyone has different strengths. Everyone. And our aim as a diverse community is not to pretend that we are all the same but rather to be cohesive and make it work despite the fact that we are different. And we are significantly different. Culturally, faith, age, language, where we’re from, what our background is – all incredibly different so we don’t expect or hope or want people to change who they are. We want people to be themselves, then we figure out how to work together as a team and as a family while respecting each other’s differences. I think for some of our volunteers to have gone through what they have in their asylum process, there probably aren’t many places where they can come and be themselves without worrying, without all of that pressure maybe. But that they can come to Baraka and we can laugh and relax a little bit and they can be themselves in an environment that is welcoming but that doesn’t expect them to be different to what they are.”
Thanks Clare, Oumaima, Pouria and all the volunteers for your amazing work for each other and us – we will endeavour to pray for you and your work. You can hear more from the team when they were interviewed for a featured on Radio Ujima a few months ago.
Baraka Café is open Tuesday – Friday 0900-1500 during term-time.
ECFC week-time activities
There are other regular ECFC activities during the week:
Midday prayer on Zoom Monday 1200-1300 (David Moore: david.moore@ecfc.org.uk).
Home Group in person. Monday evenings 1945-2100 (alternate weeks at the Bees and Boyes) meets at Rich and Emma’s house one week and Rach and Pete’s house the next. Please talk to them if you are interested.
Home Group online. Monday evenings 1945-2100 on church zoom. Please talk to Alison and Martin if you would like to join that.
Stay and Play Wednesday 0930-1130 (Anna Koslowska: anna.kozlowska@ecfc.org.uk).
Midweek Meetup Wednesday 1330-1530 (Sarah Matthews: sarah.matthews@ecfc.org.uk).
Iranian Bible Study Wednesday 1930-2100 (Babak Shokravi: refugeesupportworker@ecfc.org.uk).
Kids Matter Thursday mornings starting next week, 2 October, with a taster session and continues weekly (Jan Rossington: bjrossington@gmail.com).
English conversation class Friday 0930-1115 (Jan Rossington: bjrossington@gmail.com).
Childrens Groups on Sundays
Please do pray for all these groups as they grow and evolve.
New groups?
We have been thinking about a café style drop-in for people wanting practice and improve English language and also a creative crafting group. Maybe during a morning in the Beehive, maybe you’d like to either join-in or even help run one of these?