16 minute read
Into the unknown
Carl and Viv Palmer are stepping off the cliff
At least that’s how they describe the move away from secure jobs in London for 28 years, to unsalaried work in a small community in Staveley, Chesterfield. Carl has been a pastor for many years with Viv serving alongside him, giving the churches they have been with ‘two for the price of one’.
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UK Poverty and Debt
Evangelism
Carl didn’t grow up in a Christian home but attended a Billy Graham rally in a football stadium when he was 18. Carl says, “I was part of the Boys Brigade and signed up for what I thought was a coach trip to Norwich – I had no idea we were going to hear an evangelist speaking.” But he never looked back after giving his life to Jesus that night.
Viv grew up in a Christian family who took her to church and tried to help her read the Bible, but with only a King James Version, it was hard for her to decipher what Christianity was all about. Viv wanted to live well and had a sense of needing to do what was right but was very aware of her faults and couldn’t see how to make living for God work. Enter Carl.
Carl and Viv met as they both sang in a gospel choir. Carl spent time with Viv explaining to her the love and grace of God, how even though we fail and sin, God welcomes us back when we turn to him for forgiveness. After one such evening at the choir, Viv went home and prayed. She asked God to come into her life and felt an immense sense that the burden of never being good enough was being taken off her shoulders.
So what cliff are we talking about here?
Carl and Viv have given up ‘regular work’ to serve with Edge Ministries. They have been inspired by the vision of Edge to go to forgotten people in forgotten places. Often in urban areas there are people with great needs, but there are also various community facilities. But some areas in the UK are barren. There are many who live in places that can hardly be called communities. They are isolated, lonely, in desperate poverty and often struggling with mental health issues or addiction.
The work of Edge is three-fold. They have Edge Communities, made up of Christians committed to serving those around them and enjoying fellowship together. Then there are Edge Centres – these are hubs where they run free drop-in cafés, set up toddler groups, give advice for those struggling with debt, benefits or addiction, depending on the needs of the local community. They even wash, iron and distribute old school uniforms to give to families who struggle to clothe their children for school. And for anyone wanting to join in with the vision of reaching the poor in areas that have traditionally been neglected by the Church, you can be a part of the broader Edge Network.
But how, exactly, does Edge bridge the gap between being involved in social action and sharing the gospel?
Viv says, “Building relationships and loving people is so important: not pre-judging others but listening well. You have to really love the people God loves, but you also have to lead with Jesus. Modelling to others how you put your life in his hands and showing what happens when you do that.”
In all their conversations with local councils or other agencies they partner with, they are clear that the gospel is front and centre: “We make sure people know that we are ‘good news’ people, from the outset.” They’re clear that it’s Jesus who’s transformed their lives because, as Carl says, “People end up thinking that you are just a really great person, and that Christianity can’t be for them, because they are not as good as you.”
Carl and Viv have always experienced the provision of God in their lives. They have noticed a pattern of stepping out in obedience to God while not knowing what will happen financially, only to see God provide soon after. They opened their Individual Partner Account in 2021 to make giving to them easier and in the first week after their move from London, they received enough funds to provide for their moving and living costs for a couple of months as well as to give to those God placed on their hearts.
Carl and Viv enrolled on the Stewardship Support Raising Training to learn more about the best way of growing their partner team. It’s been a great help as they thought about their new way of life without a regular income. Viv was even offered a number of jobs in the first few weeks they moved to Chesterfield but felt God didn’t want her to take them. Instead, she wanted to be available to do the work God had put before her to do.
The training helped them both to see that living with a team of partners who encourage you, pray for you and support you financially is a real blessing. The stumbling block for Carl was wondering whether they would end up living in poverty themselves. But he realised through the training that it’s ok for Christian workers to receive a decent salary. Knowing how generous God is by nature means not only will he be generous to you, but that he wants you to live generously by giving out of what he provides.
Carl also realised that he had a fear of asking others to join their partner team. He knew that part of him didn’t want to be reliant on others for his finances, but he recognised it as illogical, because we are all reliant on God for our whole lives, even our very next breath. There is no real difference in trusting God to provide through the generous giving of others and trusting God to provide through a salary – everything belongs to God anyway.
Although this move and financial life change is daunting and staring over the edge of the cliff can be scary, Carl and Viv know that they are where God wants them to be and they want to learn to trust him more.
Jo Arkell
Partnerships Executive
Images by Magdalena MaLu Photography
stewardship.org.uk/ partners/carlandvivpalmer For Carl and Viv as they work to pastor the local Edge Ministries team and develop useful resources. Visit Edge Ministries’ website for ways to get involved. edgeministries.net
I’m passionate about Local Church, Prayer and Worship, Children and Youth and my music
Karis Nelson Ponnampalam
Before I had a Giving Account, I felt like I was giving blindly. I wasn’t sure where my money was going, nor did I feel like I kept track of what I had given or who I was giving to. I was reluctant to give more to charities as I didn’t feel I had control over what I was giving.
There is a line in a worship song which resonates with me: “Break my heart for what breaks Yours. Everything I am for your Kingdom’s cause.” God’s heart breaks for the things that are broken in this world, and I want to be able to care about the broken causes in the world. We are called to be generous with what we have – whether that is our resources, our finances, or our time.
While my heart was in the right place, my giving was a bit erratic, and I wasn’t doing myself any favours trying to manage my giving along with the rest of my finances.
Since I have set up my Stewardship Giving Account, I can easily manage how much I give, helping me become more generous. I can prioritise my giving through my Giving Account and make an impact on the causes I care about. This has, in turn, helped me manage the rest of my finances and allowed me to know that I can tithe properly along with setting aside additional funds to give to other causes that I might come across without going into overdraft. I no longer have to think to myself, “I would love to give, but I just don’t have the money to do that right now.” What I like about the Giving Account is how flexible it is. Not only can I have my regular giving set up for my monthly tithing, my sponsored children, and a few others I support, I know I still have enough to give to a charity or individual who may need some extra support throughout the year on more of a one-off basis.
It fills me with joy knowing that I can build a balance within my account to really make an impact. I can look at my Stewardship balance and say, “Yes! I’ve got this much money to give away; I can support this charity.”
There is something extremely freeing about knowing that you have funds set aside to give and that when you do give, it blesses others. I feel blessed to be able to support others and be able to contribute in a small way to the kingdom work that is going on around the world.
Once you've opened a Giving Account with Stewardship, you can start to enjoy all the benefits that the account has to offer:
boost your donations with Stewardship’s Instant Gift Aid
increase your giving impact
search over 11,000 charity partners
add and remove charities that you want to give to
access your account 24/7, giving you total control over your charitable giving.
Find out more about the Giving Account
stewardship.org.uk /giving-account
Called to the north
For Jônatas Bragatto, preaching is in his blood. Coming from an Italian family who immigrated to Brazil, his grandparents became born-again believers after his grandfather experienced a miraculous healing from a tumour, when doctors were convinced he would never recover. He became a minister and he raised 13 children with his wife whilst planting churches in Brazil.
Church Planting
Jônatas’s father followed his grandfather’s footsteps in ministry and Jônatas himself preached his first sermon at 11 years old after an encounter with God. Seventeen years on, he’s still preaching, albeit in the very different setting of a council estate in the North East of England.
Back in Brazil, Jônatas worked as a travelling evangelist and teacher until he was invited to guest lecture at a Bible college in London in 2016. “I never wanted, expected or thought God would bring me to the UK. But during the month I was here, I understood that God was calling me to this country,” says Jônatas. He went back to Brazil to organise his papers, sold everything he had, and arrived at Gatwick Airport in 2017 with three pieces of luggage and £130 in his pocket, believing that God would open doors.
And they did open. He soon realised that God was calling him to the North of England, so Jônatas joined a small Anglican denomination, with a proposal that he and other young ministers would help to revitalise aging congregations. He moved to Middlesbrough and became the minister of a very small church of three or four people, who hadn’t had a pastor for around a decade.
But early last year everything changed when advanced corruption within the denomination began to come to the surface. “It really was a hurricane – a complete nightmare,” says Jônatas, who is unable to give many details due to ongoing investigations into the denomination by the National Fraud Police and the Charity Commission. To add insult to injury, he was made redundant and dismissed illegally without the financial means to contest it, and the church was closed.
“I prayed, asking God: what do you want from me? Do you want me to move to another area?” But Jônatas felt convicted
by the passage in Acts chapter 18, where Paul wanted to leave Corinth, but God spoke to him in a dream, saying: ‘Do not be afraid; keep on speaking, do not be silent. For I am with you, and no one is going to attack and harm you, because I have many people in this city.’ (Acts 18:9-10, NIV). “I felt God telling me too that I needed to continue the work in this place.”
Jônatas went on to plant Word and Spirit Church, an independent reformed church whose inauguration service was on Easter Sunday last year, with a modest three members, including Jônatas. Since then, the church has seen miracles each month. “Every Sunday is a surprise with what we’re seeing God doing,” he says.
The church is located in Thorntree estate in east Middlesbrough – the fifth most deprived estate in the UK, according to government statistics. Jônatas explains why he chose there: “I was praying for the area and I asked God: where do you want us to be based? We had been worshipping in the town centre but people don’t live there any more so I wanted to work in an estate. I looked at the map, and I found out that the last evangelical church in Thorntree had closed 14 years beforehand.”
“One of the reasons why churches don’t want to plant in places like these is because most of the people in the area are on benefits or have very little income, so it’s not financially viable. You need external funding because you can’t expect, at least initially, any money coming in. This place was abandoned.”
Jônatas began a relationship with a community hub there, which they currently rent for their services. When he first spoke to the manager, she told him if they were coming there to do charity work, the area didn’t need any more of those organisations. “I said, ‘You’ve hit the nail on the head, because we don’t have the money to do charity work! We’re here to do spiritual work with people.’”
When the church plant first began in early 2021, the pandemic meant they couldn’t meet, so they started speaking to people in the streets of the neighbourhood. It was there where they first began to see fruit – people asking for prayer and help and even joining them for worship outside in the sunshine.
Jônatas utilises social media as an evangelistic tool and a lot of their growth has come from people in the area who had seen their videos. In nine months, the church has grown from three to 18 official members, with Sunday attendance in the thirties. Ten or more of those members are students at Teesside university, and the church has been particularly reaching students with a Hindu background.
One of the converts is a student from an orthodox Hindu family from the highest caste in India who threatened to disown her if she decided to be baptised. She first came to the service after seeing an Instagram video and from there invited Jônatas to visit her house and share the gospel with her and her housemates.
Jônatas was further encouraged when on Christmas day eight new people attended – six of them from Hindu backgrounds. “One of the guys said that he understood the meaning of Christmas and was shocked that God could become a human being. He said he would speak to his boss about changing his shift pattern to be able to attend on Sundays, and he’s been coming ever since.”
At the same time as evangelism, it’s important to Jônatas to be working on effective discipleship. In 2022 he is starting small groups, developing a course called ‘First steps in faith’, as well as vocational ministry training for those who wish to serve in leadership.
But the growth of the church has come with many challenges. “We’ve been attacked in the street doing evangelism. There are a lot of gangs in the area; it’s a dangerous place but my wife and I know that we’re here for a purpose,” says Jônatas. They also want to register the church as a charity, but don’t have the funds to be able to do so. The income from the church itself just about covers the rent and expenses.
“We’re moving by faith not by sight because what we see before us is a financially unviable church. But what God has done has been astonishing. I don’t have a salary or a fixed income at all. I’ve only been surviving because of gifts into my Stewardship Individual Partner account, which we set up in June – I don’t have any other financial security.”
Sometimes Jônatas is overwhelmed by how much there is to do. As well as pastoring, he does all the media work for the social channels. “If we had more resources, we could ask others to do it which would take the burden off. But I have lacked nothing from the first day I arrived here as an Italian Brazilian missionary. I believe as we continue obeying, he will continue to provide because it’s his church and his vision.”
“We’re in one of the poorest areas of the UK, with no revenue coming from tithes and offerings, and a very traumatic background because of what the previous church went through. But we’re here because God gave us a vision for the north-east, to continue planting churches. I had all the reasons in the world to leave but our heart is here. I’m certain that this is where God wants us to bear fruit.”
Catherine Durant
Senior Editor
stewardship.org.uk/ partners/20371715 For more open doors for the student and youth mission in Teesside University. Pray for new mission partners and financial supporters for the ministry work in Teesside and for more leaders and ministry vocations. To find out more about Word and Spirit Church, visit:
wsteesside wsteesside bit.ly/3HOQyJx or drop an email to wsteesside@gmail.com
