Community Action

As our name suggests, we’re all about community – reaching, serving, loving and supporting people no matter what. At Longton Community Church, we believe that mission comes in many forms – it is both local and overseas, and can range from running holiday clubs to help busy parents, to refurbishing the home of someone in dire poverty, to building latrines for a church in Uganda.

Longton Community Church is involved in a number of local mission projects:
The Besom in Preston and Chorley is a local branch of a nation-wide charity that provides many opportunities for people to reach out into the community and help others in incredibly practical ways. Projects that Longton Community Church members have participated in include gardening for the elderly, painting the homes of single parents, providing furniture for families living in shabby, run down housing and filling Christmas hampers for those unable to afford a few seasonal luxuries.

Christians Against Poverty is an award winning debt counselling charity with headquarters in Bradford and a growing network of centres throughout the UK. Thousands of families nationally have already been released from the pressure of debt through a combination of advice, financial education, budgeting and insolvency services, and Longton Community Church recently became a CAP centre in Preston and the surrounding areas.

Street Pastors is an inter-denominational Church response to urban problems, engaging with people on the streets to care, listen and dialogue. It was pioneered in London in January 2003 by Rev Les Isaac, Director of the Ascension Trust, and has seen some remarkable results, including drops in crime in areas where teams have been working. Street Pastors was launched in Preston in December 2008, and several members of Longton Community Church are part of this new team, who will be in Preston from 9pm until 3am every Friday night.

Longton Community Church members are also actively involved in Prison Ministries, running Alpha and Sycamore courses, as well as writing to and visiting inmates. Additionally, we have a team of people who work alongside local chaplains to do Hospital Visits, supporting the unwell and their families in what are often stressful and difficult circumstances.

Further from home we have built a relationship with Holy Spirit Fire Church in Uganda, and teams from Longton Community Church regularly go to Uganda to work with the leadership there – running youth and children’s events, women’s outreach events, visiting local prisons and hospitals, even helping to build facilities at the church so that the pastor can continue to home local abandoned children.