Warm Welcome Spaces are blessings
Jude Levermore, Head of Mission in the Connexional team, preached at the Evensong service for supporters of the ‘Warm Welcome’ campaign on Wednesday 17 April at St Paul’s Cathedral.
24 April 2024
Around 1,000 people attended the Evensong service for supporters of the ‘Warm Welcome’ Campaign, many of them have been involved with the campaign as organisers, volunteers, guests or donors and wanted to get together to celebrate a second year of providing Warm Welcome spaces for people who need them.
Launched for the winter of 2022-23, the Warm Welcome campaign began as a response to the cost of living crises. The Warm Welcome campaign has now grown into a wider movement for belonging and connection in over 4,000 community spaces made by and for everyone. They bring hope, friendship, and human warmth to communities, helping people feel less isolated and less lonely while boosting wellbeing.
This year, the Warm Welcome team created new relationships, including with National Grid. Their Community Matters Fund granted £2.7m to more than 400 Warm Spaces.
Shafraz, an asylum seeker from Sri Lanka shared how much the warm welcome spaces in Waltham Forest mean for him and his family. “For me and for many other asylum seekers, warm spaces continue to offer warmth, friendships for life and the support at the time when we feel isolated and vulnerable.”
Prayers, led by Revd Robert Coupland, Sacrist, highlighted the stand against injustice and oppression, as well as the sheer desire of Warm Welcome’s partners (Kids Matter, Libraries Connected and representatives of Warm Welcome Spaces or the Good Faith Foundation to name but a few) to help ignored and unseen people.
As the Methodist Church in Britain was instrumental in starting Warm Welcome, Jude Levermore, Head of Mission in the Connexional team, was invited to preach. Her sermon was based on Isaiah 58. 6-11 and 2 Corinthians 3. 1-3 from which she emphasised two points.
De-bunking a theory of ‘what goes around comes around’ she firstly stressed that the blessings on offer through Warm Welcome Spaces come in a variety of often unexpected ways, . “If we open a Warm Welcome then we shall be blessed by friendships blooming in unexpected places […] Warm Welcome. This is the transformation that the gospel, the good news promises.”
For her second point, Jude stressed the importance of love, kindness and patience as preached by Saint Paul. Speaking in particular to those who had been involved in warm Welcome Spaces she said “You are a letter, you, ‘yourself’, made your heart available to be written on by God, you’ve made a difference, and your message of love does make a difference [...] Our society is made more whole because of you.”
“What matters is what’s written on our hearts, and the invitation for us is to let God free, to write new stories, warmer welcomes and personal and community transformation because the Spirit of the living God, the road of love has no end – Amen.”
