In Part 1, Matthew talked about his journey from a childhood on the social services "at risk" register to being senior pastor of a thriving church. Here he talks about various aspects of Kings Church's ongoing mission, including "Caring Hands", a day centre for the disadvantaged, "Little Eagles" nursery, "Kings Kitchen" café, and other initiatives.

HUW: Where did the finance come from to buy the building for 'Caring Hands' and the people to staff it?

Matthew: We took a mortgage out on the building after buying it at an auction for £240,000. Local churches and Christians supported the project - at one of our Bible weeks we received a love offering which helped to pay a substantial amount off. We spent in the region of £60,000 refurbishing the building, and then opened it to the public.

Now we give out around 200 meals a day and provide showers and clothing. We also offer internet access, guidance on housing, money management and legal advice. It's just grown! One of the big areas that these guys lack is doctors and medical provision because they're living on the street. So we submitted plans to the Primary Health Care Trust with local Christian doctors, and we got the go ahead and approval to open a medical centre at Caring Hands two days a week when we have GPs coming in.

Do you manage to get some of these people through Caring Hands into the church?

Yes, most definitely. Our aim is to get people saved. Some make it all the way through and go on to be disciples like the young man who is out mowing the lawn today. A lot of our helpers are guys who were once the other side of the counter. Others come along and they make commitments but we sometimes struggle to hold them and our big problem there really is we are in the middle of a very deprived area with lots of prostitution and drug abuse.

Where do you see it going from here?

It would be great to have a community farm that would be run by Christians who are specifically called to work with those with addictions. I spent some time in South Africa, helping on a rehab farm for seven weeks with Mara and the children and this was very, very beneficial to us. I was working with drug addicts and alcoholics. Mara was working with pregnant women who were HIV positive, because she's a trained midwife. It was a steep learning curve, because of the crime, the guns, the suffering.

In the next 18 months here we want to develop the medical side and build up a healthy living programme for these guys. As Caring Hands is growing and expanding, we're looking at the back part of the land to develop for training purposes, so that we can equip the unemployed or homeless lads that come to us and give them a skill for continuing in life. We're just having discussions with 'CRASH' about developing the back of the land and if we use it for training purposes they will partner with us.

Can you explain what 'CRASH' is and how that will work?

Well "CRASH" is the humanitarian charity arm of the building trade. B&Q, Barratt Homes, Wimpy - they all support projects for the homeless and supply the building material. Half of the materials for the medical centre came through the building trade.

Would you be able to supply people doing the training from within the church or would you have outside people doing that?

We would hope to do both. We have "3R" downstairs which is our computer recycling project. We set it up basically at the beginning of the year. We found a technical guy to help - he was coming round to us but was unemployed. He wasn't a Christian but agreed. After he'd been with us four months he gave his life to the Lord, which was wonderful.

We take young men, women from different training programmes and we teach them how to strip computers, how to rebuild them and how to put in software. But it's an outreach ministry in more ways than one because it exists to support Caring Hands and we've seen people give their lives to the Lord.

We also have King's Kitchen - a drop in café - open to the public two days a week where people can come in. We offer a free counselling service and are just about to start a parenting course for families in the local community.

What do you see as your main ministry? What's your real passion?

Winning souls. Evangelism is a serious part of my character. I'll do anything if it will get people saved. Not long after I'd become a Christian I had a dream or vision of two gates: one was narrow, the other broad. The narrow gate had a radiating light coming out, hitting peoples' faces and out of the multitudes there was a very small, single file, queuing up to go in this gate. Multitudes were going into the other gate which was covered with smoke, and they just disappeared. I found myself in the single file queue. And as I looked across, I didn't know who they were, but I just sensed that I knew people who were walking into the broad gate. I had the harrowing feeling of why hadn't I said something to them?

There's a lot of work to be done!

Just a couple of weeks ago a 14 year old girl from a European country walked into the church and said to me, "I'm fourteen and I was raped two months ago by my cousin, and I've never told anyone, and I need to confess it, because I'm dirty. I can't tell my family, it would bring shame on them if they knew that I was raped". We helped her and she found out she wasn't pregnant. But I found it heart breaking - the pain that she's going through and the way she'd been abused. That's the society in which we live. I'm thankful that we worship the Jesus who can bring healing, sanctification, restoration to that young girl's life. They're the sort of things that we face.

The church is about those on the outside, not just those on the inside. So many "Christian" programmes are forever about equipping church leaders and equipping our congregations and all our folk are saying, "Let's go to the next conference". Jesus says, "Pick up your cross, follow me, I'll show you what to do - it's out there".

Are there any other areas of ministry you want to mention as a church?

Little Eagles Nursery is a full time day care nursery for pre-school children. It's providing a service for this community which makes the locals come to the church. Little Eagles' purpose is to get people saved, and to put the love of Jesus in these young children. Some Muslims send their children to our nursery because they want their children to grow up with Christian principles in their life. It's another form of

outreach.

We've seen Little Eagles grow, and we've now got eight members of staff. We put on different events throughout the year.

Can you tell me a bit about the community side of Caring Hands. How's that developing?

Obviously much of our flavour was gained from our time with you guys - in evangelism, in outreach, in meeting the need of the poor, and also in community life. Relationships grew and people wanted to stay in our three bedroom rented house for weekends. Then several people asked if they could move in. We changed rooms around so we could fit them in. These people weren't in need, off the streets - they had their own accommodation and jobs. We just loved each other and we just loved being together. When we saw what God was doing, we said, 'Lord we need bigger premises'.

We moved across the road together and Kings Christian Community just grew from there. This was Acts 2:42 in action - people who wanted to share all they had in common and live their lives for one another. We lived communally for five years, but being above Caring Hands and opposite to the church was a bit much and we moved out of the community this year.

How did you get involved with Multiply and what is your vision for the Network?

Before I was a leader here, Kings Church had been part of the Multiply Network. I was asked to be our Multiply representative. I felt that I knew the heart of what Multiply was about. I'd already got a lot of good existing relationships in Multiply and it was just working on them.

Have you found any difficulties in working with local authorities and agencies?

It was very difficult in the early days because of the view that, "You're unqualified, we're professionals, we know what we're doing - you're do-gooders." In recent years, we've seen a wonderful turn around.

Take the NHS, for example. They wanted to start an outreach project to the prostitutes and said, "We need your credibility; can we have copies of your Caring Hands logo to put on our paperwork?" It's wonderful because the world is coming to the church, saying basically, "We need Jesus."

The town centre manager, in one interview said, "Every town centre needs a Caring Hands and needs a church like Kings, because they're making a difference." I've been sent up by the police to help persuade people against jumping off the building just opposite us here.

Have you got a final word for the Jesus Fellowship?

Wake up you sluggards! What a huge giant in the land! I just think the potential is still untapped. The heart that you have is phenomenal. The lifestyle that you live is incredibly challenging. But I still think your greater days are yet to come.

Back to Part 1