The City Vision team is working with a group of Christian leaders in Wakefield. Below is a blog about when we came together to pray during covid and the fruit that has come out of it. We are continuing to meet and workshop together, seeking where God is working in Wakefield and how we can join Him in blessing the city.

Vision Wakefield

God’s view of the city sees no division and unity is its strongest asset. Where covid sought to divide we came together and prayed. It’s easy to miss the significance of the word ‘together’, perhaps because the true power of ‘together’ is something we cannot fully comprehend until we are looking down at it from heaven itself. True unity can only be birthed out of true humility, and true humility is indestructible. It changed the world once and can do it again.

As a group of Christian leaders here in Wakefield we have felt the sting of covid and seen the struggle and heartbreak of those around us. The difficulties that came with this virus have only set our hearts more a-light than ever before with a passion and a love for this city and every person in it. To see the hurting comforted and filled with His peace, to see love seep into the cracks of the broken places, to see strongholds fall and people freed.

Before lockdown

Prior to lockdown and meeting together online, our first gatherings as a group were about having a ROC (Redeeming Our Communities) conversation in Wakefield with founder, Debra Gree OBE from Manchester. This sparked interesting conversations together as a group about what else we could do for our city as Christians together.

The ROC conversation was successful and insightful, the highlights from it are below.

Input from Sheffield

Following that we invited Jon Watts and Sandie Keene CBE who are part of 'Together For Sheffield' to come up and talk to us about their experience of running a Faith Action Audit, which also created an excited buzz in the room as the Wakefield leaders began thinking about and discussing how we could measure the good works in Wakefield.

Christmas card

Since coming together weekly to pray we have begun to experience unity like never before as a collective group of Christian leaders and it has unveiled a doorway to the city. As well as praying weekly, we started to workshop together and pool our ideas as to how we can love and bless the people of Wakefield. During our time together an idea came for every resident of Wakefield to receive a Christmas card from us to bring some joy and let them know that we are praying for them at this difficult time.

From that seemingly simple suggestion stemmed a whole array of ideas such as a website with a joint welcome video message from us and a place to send in prayer requests and stories; a phone line to call in with prayer requests, digital vans around the city with the card and a message on them, a joint online live streamed Christmas service; and a drive - in carol service.

From the moment of that suggestion the following months became very busy and exciting as we continued to meet weekly to pray and plan. We wanted to bring a glimmer of hope, to let people know that they are loved and to help them to see and love their city in a new way.

This is the front and back of the final card design after much deliberation and joint decision making. We made sure to keep it current by including covid masks and honouring key NHS workers, and we also kept our main message on the front - 'God with us.'

We commissioned the Royal Mail to post one of these postcards to 65,000 houses in Wakefield.

We also offered a generic version of this card for other cites to use if they so wished to.

Digital Vans

Here is one of the two digital vans that traveled around Wakefield every day for nine days!

Online Christmas Service

As City Vision's media producer, Charis had the privilege of producing the pre recorded online service which was to include a message and a carol from each church leader of Vision Wakefield as well as to showcase good works from around the city and capture good news stories. It became more of a program than a service.

"The process of actually getting out into the heart of the city, meeting people and seeing what’s happening in different places opened my eyes and gave me an even greater love for Wakefield. I filmed at two food banks, the Community Awareness Program, the City of Sanctuary and I met some local people with truly heartwarming stories to tell. I really got a flavour of the city like I never had before, and one of the comments afterwards about the service was “that was the first time I have ever felt proud to live in Wakefield”, so it seemed to have had the same effect on those who watched it." - Charis

The Christmas program was for congregation members who wanted to attend a carol service but couldn't due to covid, but it was also for all of the residents of Wakefield who were to receive a Christmas card from us. That means people all ages, races, religions and none, and so our main message to them was one of love and that 'God is with us'.

With such a wide audience the intro to this video needed to be gripping and relevant to all of those watching. We wrote a poem that included some of Wakefield’s history and culture, some reference to the covid times that we are living in, and most importantly a glimpse of God’s heart for the world. Below is the opening of the program with the poem.

We live-streamed the program on Sunday 20th December and it has had around 1000 views in total including some of Wakefield's church congregations. The website has had around 2000 visits and people have sent in their prayer requests.

One request was from a 76 year old man living alone who was extremely grateful for the card and the prayer. Although we didn't get thousands of responses it was all worth it to hear those that did come through!

People were touched by the Christmas program, here is a message from one church member:

"I really enjoyed the Vision Wakefield carol service. It was so well put together. Thank you so much to all involved for their hard work and dedication. On top of it all, it's such a brilliant way of bringing the meaning of Christmas to all those who don't go to church or wouldn't ever consider doing so. What a great idea to spread the Good News! For the first time ever (I think!), I feel proud to belong to Wakefield." - Member of St Helen's church

Below are some clips extracted from the program. The Community Awareness Programme (CAP Care) in particular had a lot of recognition with 38 shares on Facebook!

Drive - In Carol Service

The program, with it's mix of stories from all over the city, was also shown at the Trinity Drive - in Carol service which was pulled together by Methodist minister, Rob Cotton. This also took place on Sunday 20th December at 3 different times in the day and was a fantastic way of bringing people together in a safe and law abiding way.

All of the tickets for the drive - in service sold out quickly and the car park was packed with cars excitedly beeping in response to what was happening on stage. As people sang along in their cars, some adorned with Christmas decorations, there was a real sense of togetherness and hope after a tough and surreal year.

"The drive in was a wonderful opportunity to enjoy 'being together' and singing Christmas Carols which has been sadly lacking this year, a real uplift to our spirits. Thankyou to everyone who helped make it such a lovely occasion and probably froze in the process!" - A commenter on Facebook

There were all kinds of people at the service, including the regional Methodist leader who oversees 230 churches and the Bishop of Wakefield. We filmed a short interview with them both and some of the other church leaders about the power of unity and being the hands and feet of Jesus to serve others together.

Feedback

Below are quotes from some of the church leaders of Vision Wakefield...

"Meeting and praying together has brought a sense that we can definitely work together and love one another, we can’t do it without each other." - Pastor Kevin Foster, New Life Christian Centre

"The quality is much better than what we could have done alone. Harry S. Truman said, 'It’s amazing what you can achieve when you don’t care who gets the credit.'" - Reverend David Gerrard, St Catherine’s and St Andrew’s

"I really appreciate the opportunity to be involved with the prayer meetings, something that has been quite significant for me over the last few months, very precious." - Pastor Flora Davies, Wakefield Baptist Church

"Having a shared focus of doing something together for the people enables relationship to grow as we work and pray together." - Reverend Rob Cotton, Methodist Minister, Aire & Calder circuit

"It's amazing to meet on zoom much more regularly than in person. There is time in busy schedules to make this happen if your heart is for the city" - Sally Martin, St Helen’s Church

Investing time together produces fresh insights. Each one knows things about the city that others don’t know, sharing ideas blesses others. Coming together has helped us widen the connection that we have and we can reach more people and church leaders in this city. - Pastor Daniel Kamalu, Strong Tower Christian Centre