It was back in 2019 that Rich and Lois Evans began to explore city centre chaplaincy, looking for a way to reach the 95%+ of society that the church can’t reach. They quickly discovered that the unique profession of chaplaincy opened doors into businesses, organisations and environments that aren’t accessible to the church.
They are passionate about Chaplaincy as a ministry and the opportunity it provides to ‘GO’ out from our churches and into the ordinary places to share the love of Christ with people who are at the most challenging times of their lives.
Rather than establishing a chaplaincy project in a single environment, they have a vision to ‘saturate’ entire city centres with chaplains, who support and reach many 1000’s of people, working directly in multiple organisations, businesses and communities across all sectors.
After a short break during the COVID pandemic, Bristol Chaplaincy was formally established in early 2022, with chaplaincies being established in a number of different places and sectors. These include the top-flight Bristol Bears Rugby Club, University of Law, Bristol Crown Courts, the Bristol Harbourside Community, Natwest/Coutts Bank and a number of other businesses. They open a drop-in chaplaincy hub twice a week on a beautiful wide-beam barge, moored in the middle of a busy business district in Bristol City Centre.
However, they are not stopping there, they have ambitious plans to launch chaplaincies within the local government, the theatres and arts and to establish a chaplaincy HUB in the shopping district of the city.
By sharing the grace of God and His incredible Love to everyone they meet, they want to see people's lives change as they encounter faith.
Each week they are contacted by churches, chaplains and people interested in chaplaincy from all over the UK and are responding to a growing interest in chaplaincy by developing a new training and resource hub and bespoke mentoring and consultancy programmes for those looking to develop and establish new chaplaincies.
Over the last 6 months Rich and Lois have started exploring how they can begin to pioneer new missional communities in the heart of the ordinary places they are working in, enabling them to disciple those who are curious about faith. They are connecting with other leaders in the USA, Germany and Ukraine to explore a reimagining of ecclesia, and the pioneering of ‘microchurches’. An approach they believe has the potential to not only be ‘Kingdom Impacting’, but one that could transform an entire city!
Or, if you’d like to support Rich and Lois’s directly, here’s their paypal link.
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