I was 16 when I came to London on a short-term mission week. It was an amazing and eye-opening week, but nothing had prepared me beforehand for the world I was about to step into. Below Waterloo Bridge around 200 people had made their homes from cardboard boxes and old pieces of wood. Some marked their patch with a piece of worn carpet so they wouldn’t have to sleep on the floor, others with just a dirty blanket that provided their only comfort against the cold nights. Men and women of all ages were busily getting on with their everyday activities; some stood chatting and laughing, others huddled alone trying to get some sleep, some sat smoking or drinking from bottles hidden in paper bags, lost in their own thoughts. Many looked barely out of theirs teens whilst others, particularly the men with their unkempt beards, looked like they should be in a nursing home, not living out on the streets. Possessions such as a change of clothing were stashed in stolen shopping trolleys or black bin liners, marking out each individual’s spot. Dogs wandered around looking for scraps of food, some strays searching for a place to sleep themselves, others returning to their master’s side with their findings. Occasionally a well-dressed couple or group would walk through, keeping their heads down as they made their way to the nearby National Theatre, their expensive coats and well-scrubbed faces incongruous with the scenes around them.
My senses were on overdrive taking it all in; I, like everyone else, had seen pictures of this sort of thing on the news or in documentaries, but I’d never seen it with my own eyes. As the sun went down, groups gathered around fires lit in bins to keep warm, rubbing their hands together and chatting easily over the flames. It was obvious that this was a community of people who had been there a long time, people who knew each other; we were strangers in their midst. Some regarded us with suspicion - were we students looking to study them or were we really interested in who they were and why they had ended up here? As we got talking, they relaxed and invited us to sit and join them, our circle only interrupted by a young girl, excited that she’d managed to beg enough money for a burger. We watched as the burger went from hand to hand, gradually disappearing as each person took a bite before passing it on. What totally surprised me - and to be honest freaked me out - was that the guy next to me offered it up for me to take my share. I couldn’t get my head around the fact that they had so little and yet were willing to share it with someone they had just met. I wasn’t even sure what I was supposed to do; how could I take a bite of their food when it was all that they had, and at the same time how could I refuse? Would it look like I didn’t want to eat something they’d touched or as though I thought I was above them? Head down, I took a small bite and hoped it was the right thing to do. When I looked up I caught sight of the words ‘Welcome to Reality’ sprayed in huge red letters on the wall. The burger caught in my throat. This was reality for the people living here, and for so many others living in poverty, but it was like nothing I had ever seen. It was nowhere near the reality of the first 16 years of my life. I’d been living in a bubble, and here, sitting with people who counted a cardboard box their home, who had no bed to sleep in, no money in their pockets, no place to wash and no clean clothes to put on, the bubble had finally burst. Some of those around me had nowhere else to go; for some, living on the streets was actually preferable to the alternatives. I realised with a sickening jolt that having lived a comfortable lifestyle all my life I’d been completely oblivious to the depths of pain and suffering in the world.
Two years later, when I’d finished school, God called me back to the same area of London again – this time on a gap year working with children and young people growing up in incredibly difficult and complex circumstances and struggling to cope with life: educational failure, family breakdown, poverty, the pressures of gang culture. I had to wrestle with how my Christian faith could be relevant to people living in such a broken way – I had to explore and rethink my understanding of the Kingdom of God coming in the context of adversity and suffering, and learn to find strength and perseverance and compassion in places I would never previously have looked. How does suffering, grace, mercy, and justice apply here? And, more importantly perhaps, as God gently showed me over many years, how does the Kingdom of God bring hope to places where it is so absent yet so needed?
A few years later, I got 17 people to give me £25 a month so I could work full-time and start XLP working in inner-London. Today I live in Peckham with my wife and four young kids, and XLP works with around 2000 children and young people, and their families, each week (xlp.org.uk), and every day I explore how we can see the Kingdom of God bring hope to the places of despair (see Isaiah 58).
I know that some have challenged the benefits of short-term mission, and I appreciate many of their arguments. What I do know, is that a week on short-term mission changed my life and through the work of numerous others who have come on XLP’s Urban Mission Week and its Experience Gap Year Course over the years, children and young people struggling with growing up in the inner-city have found genuine and life-changing friendships, the strength to believe that things can be different, and a desire to work hard to see it happen – all through people coming to London and sharing their lives and their faith with them.
XLP’s Urban Mission Week this year is from 12th – 18th July. People between the ages of 16 and 25 are most welcome to come and explore their faith in the incredible milieu of cultures, nationalities, ethnicities, faiths and community that make up inner-London. They will work alongside XLP’s experienced youth workers and their teams and receive teaching and training each day, taking part in long-term projects and practical work, and make new friends in the heart of the inner-city. Some come as individuals or pairs, others come as whole youth groups from church.
If you really want to grow in your faith, and begin to figure out how you feel about issues such as poverty and justice, there is no better place to start than here. It will challenge you, make you laugh and cry, and, perhaps, like me, change your life forever.
