the other side

At Hope and Anchor on Sunday, Chris said that we often ask God for the promise, but when we get to the other side of the promise, we don't know what to do.

I've been thinking about that, and about the weight that comes with blessings, over the past few weeks as we've been working on the cafe. We were all focussed at first on finding a place, but once the papers were signed, we quickly realised we'd forgotten to envision the time that it would take for us to create a proper cafe. Now that we are two months into the building process, we are dreaming of the day that the cafe opens. But never in those dreams am I exhausted from early morning shifts or frustrated at customers or worried about supplies orders or a machine gone wonky. We've not gotten the promise yet, but we've also not gotten the responsibility that goes with it.

Chris finished his thought on Sunday by saying that we need to know Who brings us through the promise. Looking back on these past months, it is quite clear that God is preparing us for something big. We are trusting Him in the area of financial provision in a way we've not had to before. We need Him to provide for the countertops and other supplies so we can finish the cafe, not to mention all of the ways that we will need to see Him when the doors open to the public. But we believe Him and that He can make His dreams come to life. And honestly, it's exciting to live a life of faith together as a team in this area.

Anyway, I actually began this post to share with you the newsletter that we made for Lazarus. We've realised that Lazarus isn't always clear to people. Is it a person? A homeless feeding programme? An activity we do once a week? The answer is all and none to those, so here's our Lazarus Project newsletter (spoiler: Lazarus Project is the mercy ministry of YWAM London Radiant. To see what that means, click the link!).

So in short, we are still building, still trusting, still praying and seeking God. We are meeting with borough councils and members of the House of Lords and the homeless and pastors and many people in between and seeing God's dreams for London take shape in so many different ways. It feels like a fight on many different fronts this month as Brexit still looms and the people of London grow more worried and frightened - after all, we are a nation of immigrants with few native foods. It looks like we'll be eating cabbage and mutton for a while until this all gets sorted. But we are praying for our government as well and trusting that God's will will be done. And if His will is for us to have a hard Brexit and to learn what that means, then at least we are here, in the middle of London, ready to listen to Him and to share with our fellow Londoners what God is saying.

hurricane days

I thought that January would be quiet, that a lack of students would mean time to be creative and slow down a bit. All of us at Radiant did. But boy, were we wrong. Within a few days of each other, two massive things that we were praying for came to life, and we had to start hustling.

In the beginning of January, we got the keys to an empty shop in Camden. For years, we have been praying and seeking God's heart for a coffee/tattoo/hairstyling shop in Camden. And over the past year, we've seen several different properties. Peri and Chris have been scouring the internet and the streets for locations that could work. We've even gotten close to having a few of them, but they kept falling through. But this former hairdresser on Camden High Street? It didn't fall through. So Chris and Johanna signed the papers and got the keys, and we got to work.

The building that we started with is not the one that we are working in now. We tore down walls and two false ceilings to reveal over an extra metre of height. We also found a leak, shoddy electrical wiring, a false front, and more. We've been spending our days in the shop together, clearing the old out and beginning to build the new. The layout has changed multiple times, and some days are slower than others, but I love that it is team-building in the most literal sense. We don't need games or ice-breakers. We just tear down ceilings and build new walls. It is also a time when I am thanking God for the men that He sent to the team - I remember building projects where the girls had to wield the drills and carry the heavy objects, but this time, we have several guys who are really good at construction at the helm. What an absolute blessing.

Many of us will be baristas in the shop (me included!), so we've also begun coffee training. And hygiene and food training (which I also needed for Lazarus Project and our homeless feeding programmes, so it's a win/win situation for me). I really love all of the training, because they are tangible tools for reaching the people of Camden. Chris always says that more blessings bring more responsibility, and he is definitely right. We have a lot of responsibilities now that we've not had to think of before, but God is training our muscles to carry these dreams.

If you'd like to know more about our cafe, Think, check out the Instagram or the Facebook. They share our heart for making a space for community in the centre of Camden and the different dreams and plans that we have for the space that God has given us. Please also pray for us, because this is our first time navigating the treacherous terrain of council permits and the like. We trust what God is asking from us, and we can't wait to see the cafe opened to the public soon!

Tearing down ceilings in Think.

All of the Radiant staff in the shop!

In January, we also signed the contract for Hope and Anchor Community Church to move into the Odeon Cinema. We use a 175 person screen for our Sunday meetings every week now. I know. It's massive. But we outgrew the Upper Room (which we still use for other activities), and after looking around Camden for a venue that was big enough for us, we were thrilled when the Odeon was keen to host us. When God said that it was time to expand the edges of our tent, we had no idea how much!

This past Sunday was our first in the Odeon, and while we had many empty seats, we are excited to be intentional in our community as they are filled. Because they won't fill by magic - they will fill as we share God's heart with the people of Camden. And we love doing that. We are already reaching out through the Camden Town Community Choir, which is searching for a rehearsal venue in the centre of Camden Town in order to be near the local residents. Our Connect Groups are also moving to the Camden area so that we can share together mid-week as well. So between the two church venues, the Radiant base flat, and the shop, we have four locations in Camden within a year and a half. It took seven years of praying in Camden and seeing no results, but God is moving in a massive way!

This week is also the first week of our February Arts Internship and our School of Leadership and Urban Ministry Development. I am staffing the leadership school and also getting to walk alongside and mentor two of our arts interns, so I've had the excitement of a lot of new things this week. But those aren't the only new things in the works - Chasm Magazine is releasing issue two in the next few days, and it is available for pre-order already. They ship to different countries, so please check it out! And the guys (plus Sara) have been working on recording the first EP for Tidal in our recording studio. I had no idea how much work goes into making on EP, but holy cow. I can't wait for them to release it so we can play it constantly.

So this has been a long post, but a brief overview of a crazy month. I will be back soon to share what's going on with Lazarus, more updates about Think and Hope and Anchor, and more. But thank you, thank you for being on this journey with me. Your prayers have hands and feet here in London.

Christmas for Camden (Part II)

"Was this Your dream all along?"

Sometimes I think that we're so scared to take a step because we think that, if we make the wrong decision, or if we don't hear God say, "Thou shalt do this," we will be out of His will and screw everything up. So we don't move at all, and we stay in the same place, which is rarely (I think) what He intends.

So we moved. We dreamed big for how to touch all of London for Jesus' birthday, and we assembled 10,000 gifts of small anchor badges to give out to Londoners, and we passed them out in the council estates and supermarkets around Camden and invited people to Christmas dinner. The Christmas dinner wasn't our original plan, but in the end, through closed doors and rethinking and more closed doors, I think that we made it to what God dreamed for Camden. And the heart was the same - a safe place for the people of Camden to come spend Christmas together. A place where the material pressures of the season were set aside, where class and social divides were torn down, where we could all be together.

In the middle of the busyness (I would say chaos, but it wasn't. Everybody did their different roles diligently and with love), I stood in the back corner by the kitchen and looked across the room. Our neighbours were engaged in conversation with each other and with our church family. Some of them listened to the worship music with uncharacteristic stillness. Hymn, a chalk graffiti artist whose poems decorate the pavements and buildings of Camden, tried to leave to finish his shopping, but came back and sat completely silently through the worship and carols. I've never seen him so quiet before. There was a woman spilling her heart to Carrie, a mum and daughter sat talking to Ina, several homeless men that have become our mates talking with the guys, and more, and more.

"Was this Your dream all along?" I asked God.

And I knew that it was. To have us all together, worshipping Him, loving each other in a practical way. While God is complex, I don't think that He is complicated. To me, it sounds like the type of birthday party He wanted all along. 

And that's all we wanted, isn't it? To give Him glory and praise and honour, on His birthday, but also today. He's worth it. Christmas for Camden was for Camden, yes. But it was also for more of Him.

The boys barbecuing the meat outside

The tables set and ready for friends!

The choir practising carols

Some of our mates (Hymn is on the left) enjoying the worship

Christmas for Camden

There was a moment on Friday night, as four of my Radiant mates and I knocked on doors of the council estate nearest Hope and Anchor Community Church, that I forgot about the cold and dark and genuinely just enjoyed getting to be God's hands and feet in Camden. When we knocked on the doors, we never knew the reception that we would get. Some women refused to answer, even when they pushed back the curtain and saw Victoria and me smiling back at them with gifts in our hands. One man opened the door in nothing but his underpants. In London in December. His heating must work very well. And there was one man who opened the door ready to knock our living daylights out. But then we gave him the gifts for his family, and he nearly cried.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. Let me explain why it was that we were on an estate after dark handing out mysterious gifts.

Back in early November, after a weekend of paperwork and interviews and inspections, we were drained and decided to think of a way that we could bring Christmas to London on a big scale. One thing led to another, and before our week officially even began, we had ordered 10,000 anchor pins to distribute to the people of London. But just giving them a pin wasn't good enough. We wanted to give them gifts. So we ordered straw and boxes and stickers, and last week, our Radiant offices became an assembly line as we constructed boxes and packed pins to take to the people of London.

This Christmas season has seemed especially dismal in London. Maybe it has something to do with the Brexit chaos that our Parliament is sorting, or the fact that we nearly lost our Prime Minister last week. Or maybe it's that 2018 was a rough year. And the holidays are always rough. It's a time of hope, but the emphasis on hope seems to also highlight what we don't have. We originally wanted to have a street party for the people of Camden, so that we could come together as a community in a time of loneliness. It would be full of free food and live music, a camel, gifts for everyone. It would celebrate the true Christmas spirit, that God fulfilled His greatest promise to the people that He loves. But the permits didn't come through, and we planned instead a Christmas dinner for anyone who will come.

Back to knocking on doors. It's the first time we've gone door-to-door in Camden. People in London aren't necessarily warm and friendly (as I'm sure you've gathered). They don't take kindly to having their dinner or telly time interrupted by strangers. But Friday night found us laden with boxes of gifts and numb fingers that made it a comedy sketch every time we fumbled for boxes and Christmas dinner invitations. In the midst of it all, as I watched Federico cajole passersby into taking a gift from a stranger, or as Victoria, Sara, and Elin chased down strangers at bus stops, or as Sergio pulled the gifts out three at a time, I was struck by the privilege of it. This is something that God dreamt of. I truly believe that it thrills Him to see His children chase down others with a little box of hope.

And we have at least 9,000 gifts left to give out this week. The best is yet to come!

The process of creating the gifts:

The final product:

A happy recipient!

joining the fight, grabbing the plough

From the moment that Cammy, a Church of Scotland minister, called me back in September, his excitement over getting to host our DTS at his church in Edinburgh was contagious. He was brimming with ideas for us to do in our week of outreach with his parish. And his excitement was contagious - as he shared his heart with us on our first night in Edinburgh, we began dreaming of the change that could come when the people of Edinburgh hear about Jesus. 

You see, 97% of people in Scotland only enter the church to marry or bury. As we walked up and down the streets of Gilmerton, Moredun, and Gracemount, we saw many Buddhas, faeries, and other idols in the gardens and windows of the houses, but we didn’t encounter many people who knew about Jesus. When we asked Janet, one of the church leaders, about them, she said that they were cheap decorations, and when people saw their neighbours with them, they got a Buddha for themselves. I think that they don’t want to feel alone (after all, emptiness and loneliness are the human condition - we weren’t created to be alone!), so they try to fill that space with a innocuous looking idol in their garden.

The Church of Scotland churches in Moredun, Gilmerton, and Gracemount changed my perception of church. It’s odd how much of culture you don’t realise is specific to how you are raised until you encounter its opposite. Then you also have to realise that the way that you were raised isn’t necessarily correct. I’ve had ample opportunity of discovering this in YWAM, where we visit several churches around the world throughout the course of the year. I’ve been to an Ethiopian church in Glasgow, an Argentinian church in Italy, high Anglican and Catholic Churches, and churches meeting in warehouses and shop fronts. But I hadn’t realised that my expectations for church extended to the people. 

In the churches where we served, the people loved to make food for us.They made us haggis, a traditional dish, and it was delicious (so don’t let people tell you that it is disgusting!). There was one woman who is a whiz at whipping up cakes. There’s another who spends great chunks of time researching and implementing ways of saving the church money - through lowering the wattage of light bulbs to putting greenhouse plastic over the windows to keep the heat in. Many of the church volunteers have overcome drug addictions - recently. They are in a battle to regain their lives. There was one woman who is my age and has had five children, none of whom live with her anymore. She credits the church with helping her to have a purpose in life again - instead of sitting in her flat in a high rise building, thinking about what she’s lost, she has a family. She has people to take care of. And she dreams of opening her own cafe - she can do the baking, and she’s fabulous at taking care of people. 

Whilst in Edinburgh, we went door-to-door every day to invite people to the arts and sports workshops that we held in the evenings. Amazingly, many of the people that we invited came - and they came for more than one night! For a lot of them, it was their first time in the church. All of our activities (football, basketball, collaging, nails and make up, creative writing) were designed to let us spend time getting to know the people. We also hosted several barbecues, which are vital in a community that has so much food poverty. 

Scots are known for their friendliness and for being full of life. When they are living healthy lives, that is certainly true. Cammy had us rolling with all of his jokes and stories. At the same time, mental illnesses such as depression, anxiety, and alcoholism are rampant in the community where we served. The United Kingdom has plenty of resources, but what people really need to know is that they are loved. They aren’t alone. God created them and longs for a relationship with them. And also, the churches are empty, but the doors are still open there for them. And the churches in Southeast Edinburgh are desperate to welcome them in. It was an honour to serve with these brave, loving people in their churches. They are warriors. 

Autumn Catch-Up

It has grown cold in London.

I feel like I always begin with a weather update, which is true to our culture, so here it is: it is officially autumn.

I left a week and a half ago for a ministry trip to New York City to have meetings for the International Arts + Sports Gathering that we will be holding there from 7-11 October (check out here for more details and to sign up!), and when I left, it was still the end of summer. But I arrived back to 13 degrees and rain, so here we go!

Since it has grown cooler, we've transitioned from having our Hope and Anchor Community Church barbecues to giving out donuts, tea, and coffee outside during church. It creates a different atmosphere when you have a cuppa and hear worship music from the service flooding the street. I also found that we have a greater variety of people come for free teas and coffees than came for barbecue, and people are used to hot beverages being consumed in social situations. Sami, Lucas and I manned the table yesterday, and we each had deep conversations about God with the people that we met.

One man stopped dead in his tracks when he saw us, and he cried before he even made it upstairs into the service. He said he'd had a terrible day and turned down the alley that our church is on knowing that the only way forward was death. But when he saw us, he thought we were angels (which is flattering, but I think he actually encountered Jesus). He went to the service, then came down again to talk with Lucas and me, and we got to tell him about how God is pursuing him and loves him. We quoted Psalm 139, which he promised to read. I don't know if we will see him again, but it was still so beautiful to see God touch him.

As I mentioned briefly, Christian, Johanna, their kids, and I went to New York City for a week to meet with pastors and ministries about the International Arts + Sports Gathering that will be held next October. We went to NYC in March to hold the initial meetings, and this time, we saw God move in an incredible way. By the time we left NYC, we had both several locations to hold the various sessions in as well as housing and other details sorted. It is difficult to plan an event of this magnitude from so far away, but God has been very present in the details and in opening doors for us. But it hasn't just been us pursuing it; our friends and family have been connecting us to people and churches, as well. We've seen so much generosity. We always say that the Church is one body, but I've actually seen that put into motion through this, and it is really beautiful. We may lament what is happening to the church today, but the church is also alive in New York City. They are reaching the millions of inhabitants in different creative ways, and there are many of the churches that work together. It is quite something to see.

As for the rest of YWAM London Radiant, we have been as busy as usual lately! There is currently one DTS running that began in July, and they leave on outreach to Scotland, Spain, and Italy next week. I will be joining them for the Scottish portion. We'll be serving and staying in a church on an estate (think council housing) in southeast Edinburgh. It is our first time working with this church, so we are looking forward to our activities with the community there. For both Scotland and Italy, churches that we haven't met opened their doors for us. Could you pray for our DTS and staff as we make our way around Europe this autumn?

Chasm Magazine also came out with its first issue! Courtney and Carrissa have been working faithfully for over a year on this project, and there have been several crazy roadblocks in the way. They have definitely been learning perseverance, but it has paid off, and Issue One is here. Several of us contributed (I did a photography essay), and now we get to hold it in our hands! You can order a copy and have it delivered to wherever in the world you live - this is their website.

There's also a band working on their first EP (more on that to come) in our music studio, Lazarus Project planning a spa night for the homeless ladies of Kings Cross (our Instagram is here), our fashion ministry which went to fashion week, and our sports ministry running the Royal Parks Half Marathon. I am running the Half Marathon again this year, and I need to raise £150 for our charity (YWAM London Radiant). I am dreadfully behind in fundraising, so if you could take a moment to support me, even for just £10, I'd be so grateful. Here is my fundraising page. All of the money that I raise will go straight to our charity.

There are a dozen more things happening in our base and in Hope and Anchor Community Church, from a community choir on Thursday nights to our university ministry being started as one of the girls studies Human Rights at UCL to our creative writing ministry putting out a poetry book to our barista ministry and construction ministry creating a coffee cart and looking for spaces in markets around London. I hope that this post has given you a small glimpse into some of the things that we are doing this autumn - if you'd like to see more, you can follow our base instagram or my personal instagram. And you can always email me at deborahestevenson@gmail.com if you have any questions or would like to chat. I can give you my WhatsApp via email, and we can keep in contact.

Finally, it was so nice to meet and spend time with several of you this past weekend at Calvary Temple, and to receive a card from the ladies of Second Baptist. Thank you so much for all of your care and prayers.

A Brief Summer-y

Does it feel like autumn to you?

Tuesday night ended both our Bones Camp/Notting Hill Carnival outreach and the Discipleship Training School that I was co-leading with Melo and Andres, and the leaves have begun to litter the kerbs, which leads me to believe that autumn is here. But perhaps you are in warmer climes, and you are still enjoying the heat of summer (shoutout to my parents and grandparents). 

Anyway, now that the British summer is over, I finally have the chance to sit down and share what we did (aka a summer-y). 

This summer, I helped to lead a two-month outreach around England for our March DTS and June Internship. We went to Notting Hill, where we did prayer walks and evangelism in preparation for our Notting Hill Carnival festivities. Afterwards, we traveled to Islington in North London, where we stayed whilst our base hosted the International Arts + Sports Gathering for artists from around the world. The week after that, we helped New River Baptist Church to run a holiday club (aka a VBS) for children on the estate where we were staying (an estate is social housing). Some of us got to create and pioneer the teen portion of the holiday club, and we taught the teenagers parkour, football (aka soccer), fashion design, and writing as well as having film night and American culture night. It was amazingly comedic to watch them learn to play American football. From there, we travelled to Cornwall (the western-most part of England) to volunteer at Creation Fest, a week-long Christian festival. Afterwards, it was back home to London and Bones Camp, which, as I said, finished three days ago.

And there you have it, a two-month outreach in one paragraph.

But what I really want to share with all of you is a conversation that I had with God several times this summer. After all of the evangelism that we did in Notting Hill in early July, I began to get a bit frustrated. Conversations weren’t going anywhere, and I realised that it had been a long time since I had gotten to be with somebody as they made a faith decision. Sure, I’ve had a hand in the process. I’ve gotten to disciple and watch many people’s lives as they chose to change for Christ. But I haven’t seen the moment when a person chooses to give Jesus everything. And it was really starting to frustrate me. 

At Creation Fest, we were each assigned to teams that we worked in for the week. My team was the Connect Team, or the team that prayed with people at the end of the “Big Shed” sessions (the main talks that most of the 4,000 people on site at the festival attended in the morning and night every day). I thought that surely I’d get to help somebody receive Christ, since that was what the whole festival was geared towards. Families literally brought their unsaved neighbours to camp with them for a week just so that their neighbours would meet Jesus. It was incredible. But as the days went on and I had the opportunity to minister to many, still nobody made a decision to follow Christ.

Enter Connie. Connie is well-known across YWAM England as an evangelist. When she enters a place, people receive Jesus. I remember being with her on a street in Glasgow and watching her talk to people. Large groups or one-on-one, they all decided to meet Jesus. Connie had breakfast with me one morning at Creation Fest, and she asked how many people had met Jesus. I had to tell her that nobody had. Then she gave me one of the salvation bracelets that she uses to tell people about Jesus and told me that I’d need it.

Later that day, I got to be a part of three women’s faith decisions. That night, as I was standing in the back of the Big Shed, a teenager came to me, desperate for Jesus. It turns out that he’d gotten in trouble with the police at the festival skate park and realised how much he needed to meet Jesus. There wasn’t a Bible around, so I used the bracelet Connie had given me to explain salvation. He wore it around his wrist as he went to re-join the teens for Milkshake Night.

It didn’t end there. I was excited, but I wasn’t satisfied. And do you know why? Because I realised that I’d never seen somebody receive Christ at Notting Hill Carnival. When Chris met with us before Bones Camp began, he told us to raise our expectations. He said that God wanted to do something incredible. So for several days, I wrestled with that. I wanted to see salvation, but I didn’t have a lot of hope for it. 

On the Saturday night before Carnival, we were outside until 3:30 am, preparing the angel costumes. I watched Chris lead a man to Christ in front of us. The man came up with marijuana and somehow ended up leaving with Jesus. It gave me hope, and when I came out of the church again a few hours later to take photos, I stopped to talk to the first man that I saw. He was an older Belgian man. At the point in the conversation where I normally would have said goodbye, I decided to stay and ask him why he didn’t believe in Jesus. Fast forward a few (very  awkward) minutes, and he received Jesus.

On the Monday afternoon of Carnival, whilst I was on stilts in an angel costume, Peri and I talked to another man. We asked him if he believed in Jesus, and he said no. But as we talked to him about how much Jesus loves him, he started to cry. He really wanted to receive Jesus, and he prayed to receive him before we could even work up to leading him in the prayer. It was incredible to stand in that swirling chaos of high and drunk people and to watch a man give his life to Jesus.

This summer is a crazy blur. When I look back at everything that God did, I am amazed. We had artists come from all over to share their hearts for God and the arts. We got to help several different churches and organisations in their summer activities. And we got to be God’s hands and feet across this city. I am well tired now, but it was worth every night of little sleep. It is always worth it to see God move in mighty ways. 

Floris, one of my DTS students, praying for a man at Hope and Anchor Community Church

Talking to some of our new friends at a Hope and Anchor barbecue

a session of The International Arts + Sports Gathering

Everybody in this picture is called Deborah (from our teen camp in Islington)

Camping expectations vs reality (from Creation Fest in Cornwall, where we camped for nearly two weeks)

Raising our 5 metre Cross in Shoreditch during evangelism/barbecue time in a park

Courtney in the angel costume for Carnival

Sharing during Notting Hill evangelism at Bones Camp

(thank you to Joseph, Alexa, and Nestor for the photographs of me!)