Your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven…
We pray for God’s kingdom to come as part of the Lord’s Prayer each week, but what does that look like for us in our urban environment? We have learnt to celebrate “signs of the kingdom” which may appear small to others but to us are massive; when someone brings food to the weekly bring-and-share meal or offers to wash up after participating for years; the first time someone is prepared to invite anyone into their home or hearing someone grow in confidence in praying out loud.
We see the kingdom coming through local people, including new believers, gathering each week and we have seen God working in amazing ways. But we long for more growth and for healing. Even after twenty years in the neighbourhood it can still feel like a beginners’ salsa class: lots of sweating, putting your foot in the wrong place, two steps forward, one step back.
For me, the kingdom coming is wider than the individual stories of salvation. God can be powerfully at work in transforming our neighbourhoods if we give time and space to listening to what He wants to do and joining in.
At Latymer Community Church, we continue to face the challenge of being one of the churches in the shadow of Grenfell Tower. On the night of 14 June 2017 I was awoken by the sirens and saw the Tower ablaze from my bedroom window. As a local church for local people, we were personally affected by the fire as well as being involved in the community response in the days, weeks and months that followed. It’s been seven long and often hard years since then, so I was really glad to take a sabbatical in 2023. As part of this I travelled to Christchurch, New Zealand with a Churchill Fellowship to research their response to the earthquakes of 2010/11 and the mosque shootings of 2019.
If there is one thing that I learnt from my research it’s that, as Nelson Mandela said, “We can change the world and make it a better place. It is in your hands to make a difference.” I met so many extraordinary ordinary people who were agents for change simply by being themselves and bringing their unique contribution to situations of unimaginable pain and trauma. There was so much healing and transformation taking place through fantastic initiatives.
Creativity, remembering well, and forgiveness helped people to heal, and transformation came about by community ownership and collaborative working.
Three things especially stood out to me:
Forgiveness
Farid Ahmed is an incredibly humble and courageous Muslim man who at the time of the shootings immediately forgave his wife’s killer. At the Memorial Service just days after the event he said “I don’t want to have a heart that is boiling like a volcano…I want a heart that is full of love and care and full of mercy, and will forgive lavishly… I cannot hate him. I cannot hate anyone.”
Unity
Hamimah Ahmat was left a widow with two young sons by the mosque shootings but rather than turning towards hatred set up the Sakinah Trust which is the driving force behind Unity Week which happens annually around the anniversary of the shootings.
Community Ownership
Steve Jones-Poole is an activist who has worked both within the police force and in the voluntary sector, and is passionate about the best work being done not “to” or “for” or even “with” the community but “by” them, and he always seeks to work with others to help the community solve the problems that matter to them.
I dare to imagine a future for our Grenfell community where we work together towards forgiveness and unity, and there is healing and transformation, and where past trauma and injustice are the drivers for a better and more equitable future. I want my legacy to be one where I continue to choose to love the precious people of Latymer, but I also want to be salt and yeast making a difference in our community.
What do you want your legacy to be?
Find out more about some extraordinary people by visiting Hope for the long haul or by clicking the download button near the description at the top of this page.