Church Army's Steve Dixon gives local residents a taste of God's love

13 September 2006 

Teams of young people from across the UK and overseas, put their faith into action recently during a weeklong project, thanks to NE1, an event organised by Youth for Christ with support from a local Church Army evangelist Steve Dixon.

About 3,000 young people, recruited from the North East and beyond, camped together at Herrington Country Park to serve the community and take part in various activities to demonstrate God's love in the community. Steve explains, "The young people went out from Herrington Park every day in the afternoon to work on projects from the North East. There were over 100 projects and I helped to run one of them. We had six young people who joined us from NE1 and we split them into two groups; one of the groups helped to run a holiday club for 6-12 year olds and the other group went out to engage in social action work.

"A lot of NE1 across the North East was about doing social action which was a kind of free gift; young people coming in to offer their time freely because God's love is free. There were a couple of things that we did. One was to do up the garden around some Sure Start homes for the homeless in conjunction with the local Housing Association. They had been talking about working on the garden for a while but it was in such state that it needed quite a bit of effort being put into it to get it going. And so the team came in and helped provide that effort so now the local resident can take it on and it's really more manageable for them and we're hoping that that's gong to be an ongoing thing."

From cleaning up parks, running holiday clubs, drop-in sessions, and working with local street wardens, Steve's NE1 team worked hard in the community so they could engage local residents with the good news of the gospel. Steve says, "When people came up to ask us why we were doing it for nothing, we were able to say that it's because we've received God's love for nothing, that's why we wanted to pass on that message to them.

"It was a great opportunity for young people to come to the area and share their faith with other young people and to do some social action, which by its very nature, the fact that it was free would prove God's free love to everybody."

For more information on NE1, visit www.ne1online.org

For more information on Steve Dixon, follow this link.