News on the streets

April 2007

In April a team from Chelmsford came on a second visit to Ipswich in preparation for setting up a Street Pastors scheme in Chelmsford.  Norwich have recently sent out their first lot of trained Street Pastors, and Colchester are also in the process of setting up. 

January 2007

Christmas and New Year weekends were not as busy as expected, probably due to recent events. New Year’s eve was generally a good natured atmosphere, although there were a few fights. It was good to have the St John’s Ambulance also working in the town for three nights, attending to minor injuries.

Christmas 2006

December 18th-24th 2006
Town Pastors have continued to patrol the Town Centre nightly, and also the London Road, West End Road area on Saturday & Sunday night. We have teams in place up until Saturday.

December 15th-17th 2006
With a greater number of Town Pastors out this weekend we were able to handle what turned out to be a boisterous few nights. We listened and talked with people who were clearly fearful over recent events - and also cared for vulnerable people, particularly single females. Sunday was less busy.

December 13th 2006
Teams were out on Wednesday night (13th December) - the streets were less active, even for a midweek evening. Though there were not many people around, our presence was appreciated by those who were, and we did escort several lone people to cars, friends, taxis etc safely.

December 2006

Following the murders of 5 women and the murder of a man at a local nightclub at the end of 2006, Ipswich Police asked the Town Pastors to go out every night until Christmas.  Now we are back to our regular Friday & Saturday nights.

We want to thank all the prayer networks, Churches, organisations and individual Christians from across the nation, who sent us messages of encouragement and are standing with us in prayer during the recent challenging time for Ipswich.

Please continue to remember in your prayers the families and friends of the victims and pray about the underlying issues which cause girls to be working on the streets. Pray for strength and wisdom for the police.

Autumn 2006

November 2006 - Lots of conversations with people around the two missing Ipswich girls Tania Nicol and Gemma Adams.  We handed out leaflets (produced by the police) about Tania & Gemma designed to jog people's memories.  Generally the streets were not busy.

28 Town Pastors completed the first round of training in June, now more have followed this September to be added to the expanding team.

Summer 2006

Over the summer the Town Pastors found the streets ‘very quiet’. We recognised that it was the holiday season, with things  disrupted a little by the World Cup - there was the temporary closure of Liquid Nightclub - but generally things were quiet - Praise God!

June 2006 - Town Pastors Launch

After a successful pilot scheme over Christmas 2005, Town Pastors took to the streets on Friday June 23rd, and have been out regularly at weekends since.  The picture (left)  taken at the official launch of Town Pastors at Orwell Church Centre on the 26th June 2006 - left to right Jim Manning (IBC), Alan Caton (Police), Liz Beaton (Co-ordinator), Neil Boast (Police), Rev Paul Daltry (Waterfront Churches).