Chorley’s CRCW project passed the five-year mark in July 2024, meaning that we’re halfway through. 2024 has, in fact, been a year of anniversaries. In May, ‘The Meeting Place’ (our two-day-a-week drop-in for everyone) reached three years since opening, ‘Art & Joy’ (the informal art group that started at The Meeting Place) reached the same milestone in October and celebrated with their first exhibition, and Chorley Repair Café turned five in October. We celebrated five years of the project being active, as part of our Sunday service on 21 July.
Such anniversaries are a natural point at which to look back, take stock and think about what might be next. When I arrived in 2019, we were hopeful that we’d completely refurbish our buildings in the next 12 to 18 months. Five years later and we’re still hoping to do so in the next 12 months or so but this time it’s almost certainly actually going to happen.
In 2019, I couldn’t have predicted that we’d have so many projects operating from a building that is decades overdue a major update. I have begun to think of this as a ministry of ‘nevertheless’.
We’ve got an old, tired building that’s barely fit for purpose… nevertheless we opened for a drop-in three and half years ago and haven’t missed a week since. We see all sorts of people – isolated older people, young people struggling with their mental health, people struggling with or recovering from addiction, people who are in and out of prison, people who have no permanent place to call home, refugees, people working out who they are. And for some that tired building is a positive – they feel like they’re allowed in, that it’s not too smart or posh for them.
I’m not very artistic and nor are most of our volunteers… nevertheless we sowed and nurtured the seeds that led to Art & Joy, a radically inclusive, informal art group made up of a mix of people, most are neurodivergent, lots are LGBTQ+, some are struggling with addiction, and others are isolated. We held an exhibition where anyone in the group could contribute – the work on display was incredible and varied. The people who run the group came from outside the church, but we provided the space and the resources to enable it to come into existence and blossom.
We’re planning major building work… nevertheless we started a community gardening project in 2023 on bits of the church grounds that will be dug up as part of that building project. Had we waited until after the builders were done, we would still be waiting to set up that group which benefits attendees who are or were incredibly isolated and makes the grounds a nicer place for everyone who uses the premises.
Chorley Repair Café doesn’t quite fit this pattern. It was quite easy to set up and has been a runaway success. From 2025, I hope to hand over the running and development of the group to a committee freeing up my time for new things. It’s a bittersweet time. I’ll still be involved but as CRCWs we try to do ourselves out of a job, so that things are sustainable once we move on, and we’ve reached that point.
In 2025, a lot of my focus will be on the building project but I’m also in the early stages of developing a library of things for Chorley, somewhere that people can cheaply hire tools that you need occasionally but not every day – some ladders, a drill or a carpet cleaner for example. I also have big dreams for the gardening project, both in supporting the people who attend and for its role in restoring nature in our corner of Chorley town centre. It may be that those dreams come true or maybe God has something else in mind? Maybe there’ll be setbacks, and we’ll find ourselves with a new ‘nevertheless’ story to tell.
A town centre church situated within a large market town on the doorstep of the West Pennine Moors, Chorley URC seeks to serve both the needs of its immediate local neighbourhood and the wider community of Chorley. Chorley URC has a longstanding commitment to the community and has hosted local organisations and agencies as well as running projects for many years, including Open Kitchen with Chorley Help the Homeless, by providing meals for vulnerable people once a week. Andy Littlejohns has been the Church Related Community Worker at Chorley since 2019.