Everyone knows the churches do a lot for their communities but this is far larger than anyone ever imagined! Hope Coventry, working with Gather and the council, have found some very surprising data.
Highlights from 100 churches (surveyed so far)
The Churches across the city provide…
- 926 social services to the city
- Connect with 50% of under 5s across the city
- 113 services support mental health challenges
- 140 support the homeless
- The council provide 8 very effective family hubs, but the churches provide 53!
This startling data makes the church across the city the largest provider of services outside the state, and in some areas greater than the state.
Roger Sutton, CEO Gather Movement, comments “Generally society appreciates the work of churches, but it’s often viewed as a bit small scale and amateur. These findings in Coventry, alongside other in-depth mapping of several other cities we have supported, show that the church is vital to the life of our communities. The church has 40 times the outlets of McDonalds. It is in every city, town, village and island. It is the second health and social service in this country. However, these findings are not primarily about patting ourselves on the back, but they are about how we can be more strategic and coordinated in the future. How we can then partner much more effectively with civic life and provide even better outcomes for all the residents of our places.”
Coventry is quite a big city with a population of over 300,000 people and 186 churches. With a well-established unity group already bringing churches together in amazing ways for more than 10 years, God still has bigger plans for transformation! A collaboration between the Local Council, Gather Movement’s social action mapping team and Hope Coventry has led to revelations about the scale of services being offered by the churches and clear strategic opportunities to become even more effective in meeting the needs of Coventrians.
Where it all began
Hope Coventry was started by churches in the city in 2008 and it has grown and developed into a really effective unity group who facilitate projects and partnerships, bringing together church leaders, volunteers and organisations like CAP, Street Pastors, Healing on the Streets and much more. They’ve been registered as a charity since 2014 and have a small team of staff and trustees who coordinate the various projects and citywide events which help the churches work together to transform the city.
Some of their work in the last 10 years includes:
- Night shelters
- City Praise & Prayer
- Healing on the Streets
- CAP debt centres
- A house of Prayer
- Church leader gatherings
- Good Neighbours – a befriending project
- Covid Response
- Care for Refugees and Sex Workers
- Youth leader gatherings
Amidst all of this incredible work Hope Coventry have been planning Hope Hubs – thinking about how the church can collectively offer and deliver a service around specific themes in the city, such as mental health, food security and support for families. So they wanted to find ways to connect in a deeper way with the Local Authorities.
Mark Cowling shares how Gather Movement started to get involved…
“In 2024 the Gather Movement team connected to Jane Moffat from Coventry Council, who heads up their family hubs department. Coventry Council are recognised as being a trailblazer local authority in terms of the quality of their services and their work in this area.
Since Jane is a Christian and is involved in the work of supporting children and families from a local council point of view, we invited Jane to be part of our family hubs discussion at our Gather Movement Summit last year. That led to an invitation to help do the social action mapping of churches in Coventry.
We introduced Hope Coventry to Jane and agreed that the three organisations would work together with the church network to do this mapping exercise and then bring the church leaders together for an event where we would share the results of the mapping and identify possible collaborations from that.”
The Revelations of Mapping
As with our other mapping work, Gather Movement helps this process in a city by bringing in tools, funding, training and support to a local coordinator who uses our survey template. from Hope Coventry team found a person to take up this coordinator role and he calls up the churches in the city and asks them a set of questions based on the needs of the city, keeping in mind the delivery areas of the local authorities, which helps us to understand the work the churches are doing in those areas.
On the 8th May we had a meeting where we were able to present the results of the mapping process so far which has covered 90 churches (about half of all the churches in the city).
Mark Cowling reflects on the incredible highlights from the results of the mapping shown in the infographic image…
“We have been mapping three areas:
- children and families
- mental health
- housing and homelessness
In these areas the church is delivering a huge 926 services to the community week in, week out. That splits down to 113 that support mental health, 140 that support issues around homelessness and housing, and 726 that support children and families.
the church is reaching around half of all the early years children in Coventry before they go to school
One of the highlights is 36 parent and toddler groups that provide an educational play environment. That figure means that the church is reaching around half of all the early years children in Coventry before they go to school. So, the church has a phenomenal reach into the community.
We were also really thrilled to see how much youth work is happening in Coventry. There are 52 youth work projects and further 11 groups that specialise in special educational needs and disabilities that the church is running.
In Coventry, the children living in poverty figure is 27.6%. So, more than one in four children are classified as living in poverty. That’s a really important figure the church and local council needs to focus on. We know that if children are disadvantaged in childhood, very often that sets the shape of the rest of their lives. It’s so important that we actually respond and do what we can to help children start well in life.”
more than one in four children are classified as living in poverty. That’s a really important figure the church and local council needs to focus on
The Outcomes of Mapping
Having this access to this mapping data is a powerful tool for the churches in Coventry. Gather Movement have been able to create interactive maps which enable the churches and the council to see exactly where the different churches are meeting the needs of the community.
So if a person walks into one church and needs support in mental health or food or parenting, they can easily find a place where that person can receive that help. Being connected with the local authorities also means that a church doesn’t need to wait for that person to walk through their doors. The council already knows the individuals who need support and can point them in the direction of the churches who can care for them.
Equally the churches now have a better understanding of what services the council are offering.
This mapping work has enabled Hope Coventry to start working with the council to find strategic solutions and address the needs of the city together.
As they find ways to bridge the gaps in services identified by the mapping, they are discovering the potential of much greater impact by tackling those problems together.
By working this way the Unity group and the council have been able to find common goals to collaborate on. As they establish those goals it enables them to create a plan which they can implement and applying for funding becomes much easier as they seek to deliver on those shared goals.
More Hope For Coventry
It’s been amazing to realise the huge contribution the churches in Coventry are already making to the city. There is a fresh excitement about how effective the church can become as they work in collaboration with others.
As Hope Coventry works with the civic and health authorities, they are identifying some key areas of need including working with fathers and their parenting skills and also for kids who don’t have fathers in their lives. They have a shared dream to see the children in poverty statistics reduce.
We see, even on a national level, a shift in perspective happening for the church. That the church is not irrelevant or in decline, it is a vibrant, valuable, fundamental part of society. As we follow the biblical mandate to be one and seek the shalom of the city, our visible unity in social action becomes a powerful witness – The church is good news for the city!
