“Good God, it’s working so well!” That was what our special correspondent, MERCURY MAN, explained after visiting a very special food bank on the Avery Hill Estate. He took tea and cake with the pastor and volunteers who keep it all going.
Talk about God’s work — the church that turns itself into a food bank every Tuesday and Thursday within the wonderful din of community.
Free teas and coffees, and cakes and croissants; chat and cheers for volunteers; and a brilliant woman from the Citizens’ Advice Bureau to give all sorts of free advice to help the assorted citizens.
The various teams take more than one for Jesus at the Avery Hill Christian Fellowship. I know they won’t mind me focussing first on their box-to-box leader, pastor/minister Jonathan Coates, who had no formal training after 30 years in retail management but clearly took to it like Pep Guardiola.
The 56-year-old doesn’t mince his words. “I became a pastor because I felt it was the best platform to reach out to people and lead them to be transformed,” he says. “My very simple motivation is love for God, which gives me love for people.
“I strongly believe the community I serve can teach me just as much as I can teach them. I don’t do religion, and a church is not a building but a group of people inspired by a relationship with God to impact its members.
“It’s above my pay grade to explain the trinity, but all three impact my life on a daily basis. I talk with God every day. I live as best I can like Jesus and the Holy Spirit lives in me, giving me the strength I need to keep going.”
Married with two grown-up children and three grandkids, Jonathan (he prefers the three syllables) was adopted himself at the age of two. Very touchingly, he refers to his parents as “my heroes”. They retired 20 years ago after being pastors of the fellowship for 30 years.
“I have been here for three and a half years and took over at the height of Covid,” he says. “I got to know my congregation on Zoom, and the food bank was the one place I was free to go to.
“I loved sitting outside on the wall talking to clients from the community. What a great induction to real church.
“Avery Hill Christian Fellowship was always famous for its welcome. It ran a lot of successful groups and was well loved in the community. The piece that was missing was getting all the groups to work together and see that they all had a part to play in restoring the church to become about relationships at all levels and all ages.”
More people went to the church during the week than on the traditional Sundays, so Jonathan got involved in every group and simply make the place a church every day that it was open.
‘My job was to meet people where they are comfortable, build friendships and relationships – love, respect and serve people with no hidden agenda and they will decide if they want what you have to offer,” he says.
“The food bank is such a rich experience. The volunteers come from all walks of life and different backgrounds. My desire is to ensure no client is made to feel awkward coming and asking for help. I try to always speak to new people to take away any stigma attached to coming to us. I want everyone to leave with a smile and a genuine feeling that they have been fully supported.”
It’s not unfair to heap praise on three indomitable women in no particular order – Gill Bates, Margaret Fordham and Rosemary Hutton – as stalwart volunteers at the foodbank.
Margaret began volunteering at the Bexley Foodbank at Avery Hill when it opened in October, 2012, a few weeks after retiring as a teacher.
“The church is actually just inside Greenwich borough and, to start us off, it appealed to other local churches to give their harvest items to the food bank,” she says.
“One of my first memories is of a mountain of bags in the shed that we still use. Every week we sorted the items and put them on shelves. It seemed ages before we got to the bottom of the mountain.
“We invented a system of quickly being able to organise the items in age order by stickering each food item with a coloured dot. This made a lot of difference and we still use this system across all the Bexley food banks.
“The food bank grew along with the need and eventually a second one was opened at the New Community Church in Sidcup. As the volunteer leaders moved away from London, it was decided to appoint Gill Bates as a part-time paid leader and later a full-time worker at Avery Hill.
“During Covid all volunteers over 70 had to stop work, but we opened each of the four food banks once a week. Gill organised, via British Gas, drivers who had been furloughed to do deliveries.
“We opened at Avery Hill on Thursdays throughout the pandemic despite only having 10 or 20 per cent of our volunteers.”
God’s work again, by the look of it.
To support Bexley Foodbank, visit bexley.foodbank.org.uk, and to support Greenwich Foodbank, visit greenwich.foodbank.org.uk.
Mercury Man talks to SE Londoners with interesting tales to tell, continuing a long-running local newspaper column. Read his past stories.
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