Revive Blog - March

Welcome

Welcome to our second Revive Blog of the year! If you have received this straight into your email inbox then you would have previously been subscribed to our Revive Newsletter which this blog has now replaced. If you didn’t receive this hot off the press and would like to stay up to date with what’s going on in the life of Revive, click the ‘subscribe’ button above to make sure you never miss a post!

We hope you enjoy reading and if you have any questions or are interested in getting involved in one of our Revive Ministries then please don’t hesitate to get in touch!

Back in September last year we were delighted to be able to launch ‘Revive Café’ on both our Bracknell and West Wight sites with the primary aim of helping to alleviate isolation and loneliness amongst other things within our local communities.

West Wight

Starting in the middle of September our volunteers, although small in number but with enthusiasm and compassion opened the Revive Café doors to the public. Our focus has been to build meaningful relationships, providing hope and help.

Numbers coming into the café haven’t been huge but we saw an unexpected opportunity to venture out of the café armed with coffee and hot chocolate to a neighbouring car park. Here a small group of parents wait to pickup their children on the school bus and offering hot drinks to them has allowed us to have conversations and start building relationships.

Some of the people from this group have started to come into the café and so the relationships have continued to grow. We were delighted that one family off the back of this attended our Kerith Christmas event and heard the gospel message. More recently we have also seen some new people coming into the café including one lady being told about it by her GP.

The café is open every Monday from 2pm to 4pm at Freshwater Methodist Church which is about a 5 minute walk from where we gather for our church meetings on a Sunday morning.

Bracknell

Having previously run ‘Rock Cafe’ out of our Social Justice Hub, Covid provided an opportunity for us to pause and reflect on what we were doing and think about how best we can serve the local community. Having seen many of our previous guests struggling with loneliness and isolation and then the impact of Covid magnifying this, we wanted to make more space available to guests and create a community style café where everybody that walks through the doors are made to feel welcome. We recruited and trained a wonderful team of volunteers and a developed a simple menu and have enjoyed seeing both old faces and new coming through the café doors.

We offer a variety of food items at affordable prices (we are not looking to make a profit) and tea and coffee remains free of charge. We have been pleased with the reception Revive Cafe has had and a guest recently commented “It’s much better than it was before, it’s a much nicer atmosphere and the food is great”.

We really want to help build and nurture community and so Revive Café is more than just a place to get a bite to eat and a hot drink. We have volunteers available for guests to chat to and also a variety of board games for people to come together and engage in. We recently held our first ‘Revive Cafe Quiz’ which was well attended and it was great to see a mix of individuals playing along individually and also some form teams together. We plan to hold more quiz’s and interactive sessions each month and potentially offer some craft activities within the café going forwards.

Revive Café currently runs on a Tuesday in the K2 building in Bracknell from 12:45pm to 3pm. We would also love to open Revive Café on another day in the week to, so if you would like to get involved and be apart of this then we would love to hear from you! Email us at Revive@Kerith.Chruch

Prayer Points 

1 That we will see more guests coming through the doors of Revive Café both in West Wight and in Bracknell and that they will find community.

2 That the people the team in West Wight are reaching outside in the car park will feel engaged and that we will see more of them accessing the Café/Church.

3 We will identify and train enough volunteers to open Revive Café on an additional day in Bracknell.

UKRAINE APPEAL

I’m sure many of you will be aware of the Ukraine Sleeping Bag Appeal we recently had. We were amazed by peoples generosity and want to say a MASSIVE thank you to each and every one of you that donated a sleeping bag or gave your time to help make it happen.

Keep your eyes peeled for our separate ‘Special Edition’ Revive Blog which will focus on our Ukraine Appeal and share all about what happened and provide the latest update on the 1356 sleeping bags and other items that were packed and sent out to help the people of Ukraine.

GOOD NEWS STORIES

• Recently a young man visited Revive Café in Bracknell for the first time. He was told about it earlier that morning having attended Foodbank.

Upon arrival he was welcomed and sat down to chat with one of our Revive Café volunteers. After some time he opened up about some of the things that he was struggling with in life and agreed to the offer of prayer from the volunteer. He also showed an interest in our midweek church meeting ‘Encounter’ which he was given details about. He shared that he used to have a bible but no longer has one and so was also given a bible to take away with him.

This is a great example of our ministries working together and signposting to each other. We look forward to welcoming this young man back to Revive Café again.

• Our CAP Debt team were delighted to see 2 of their clients go debt free over the last couple of weeks - praise God!

FOODBANK STATS FOR January & February

Vouchers Fulfilled

331

Clients Provided with Food

856 (487 adults & 369 children)