Street Pastors will be taking the love of God back out onto the streets in 2010! Street Pastors is an initiative designed to help get the church more visibly present on the streets where it can have an impact for good. Dressed in a Street Pastor blue jacket and baseball cap, the team will be composed of male and female members from all cultures and backgrounds patrolling the streets of Burngreave every Friday/ Saturday night, engaging with people from all walks of life by calling into a number of takeaway shops, pubs. The aim is to engage with the community by listening, helping, serving, caring - simply because we care about the people in our community. This is an initiative stemming from a number of church members from across the city, to provide a safe and independent presence on the streets of Burngreave to engage and inter-act with local young people and the community. This project has arisen out of the Burngreave Bouncing Back March 2008 and the gun incidents of the past few years. Street Pastoring Schemes have been successful in a number of major UK cities in reducing gun and knife crime and making communities safer. This project is a partnership of local churches, the council and the police forming what is called an “Urban Trinity.” To be a Street Pastor you need to be over 18 (no upper age limit), a church member and able to commit to a 12 session training course in three groups of four Saturdays over a year. The course includes subjects such as counselling skills, drugs awareness, sociology, knowing your community, role and responsibility, and street safety. The above text was written for Plexus magazine and is therefore copyright of Sheffield Cross Links. Please do not reproduce it without their permission. If you interested in this new initiative contact Tricia Watts here. On the 24th May 2009 Pastor Jon Watts's aunt, Pat Fletcher, aged 81 spoke to us as a church about her experience as a Street Pastor. To listen to this interveiw click here. Our Street Pastors were commissioned on Friday 12th March and went out onto the streets for the first time. Click on the links below to listen to some of there experiences. Interview 1 - George Lathbridge, Denise Hibbard & Tricia Watts Interveiw 2 - Phil France Update (6th June) - Tricia Watts | 
