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Over the Christmas period, Church of England parishes have helped the homeless, the isolated, refugees and vulnerably housed through projects from winter night shelters to buying presents for the children of prisoners and food hampers for families struggling to meet the cost of household bills. In the blog below, three churches and a cathedral describe their experiences hosting large scale Christmas Day lunches and explain how these events have brought communities together. 

Lunch for asylum seekers and refugees

Sanctus, a social enterprise based at St Mark’s Church, Stoke-on-Trent, has been hosting a Christmas Day lunch for refugees and asylum seekers over the past four years. This year the event was moved to the local YMCA where there are better kitchen facilities. 

Rev Sally Smith, team vicar of St Mark’s and chief executive of Sanctus, said: “We had originally estimated 200 for the lunch but we knew this figure could grow  – in the end we were amazed when 360 people turned up including more than 70 extra people attending from Longton, a town four miles away from Stoke. We had put out a press release asking for volunteers to help with transport for people travelling in, and movingly, a local taxi firm run by a Muslim family volunteered and spent a large part of Christmas Day bringing passengers to and from the lunch. The YMCA, in addition to providing staff and the venue, also lent us three of their minibuses to pick up passengers in the Hanley area of Stoke. We had around 40 volunteers, including the Bishop of Stafford, Geoff Annas and his wife and members of the Bishop’s staff and the Archdeacon of Stoke on Trent, Matthew Parker and his wife and three children. We have several Syrian families who have been resettled in the area this year and they all came. Charities, churches and other groups in the area donated presents for the children, including St Mark’s in Basford, near Stoke, who traditionally collect gifts at their crib service. Out of 360 people there were more than 100 children present at the lunch and they all received several gifts. There was carol singing, face painting and games for the children - and there was still food left over at the end of the day. It was a fabulous event.”

Christmas dinner prepared by an inter faith group of cooks with food from the Real Junk Food Project

All Hallows, Leeds welcomed 120 guests for Christmas lunch

Rev Heston Groenewald, vicar of All Hallows, said: “We have a weekly 'Syrian Kitchen' in our café at All Hallows, and on Christmas Day our Syrian chefs gave us an amazing gift. They joined others in the kitchen to cook an amazing 'fusion' feast: traditional Christmas lunch alongside Syrian chicken, vegetables and delicious desserts. It was a marvellously multi-faith affair: for the first hour of the day, Jewish and Muslim cooks outnumbered Christians.

“After morning worship, we set up tables in the church and around 120 guests sat down to eat. Around half were Syrian Muslim friends. Ours is a wonderfully diverse parish, so we were visited by numerous other Muslim friends and neighbours. This included the imams of both local mosques, who brought us their blessing and wished us Happy Christmas. We had an enormous number of gifts donated by guests and by Leeds City Council. Some of these were left over from a party two weeks earlier, celebrating two Syrian friends receiving Leave to Remain. We had more presents than people could open. It was a very, very special day for us.”

 Lunch for people alone at Christmas

Liz Bloomer, churchwarden of St Michael and All Angels Church in Stourport, Worcestershire, writes about how the church hosted a dinner for people on their own on Christmas Day. 

“We had about 60 people for the lunch with at least 20 people helping out. We extended it this year and took meals to people who were housebound too. People in the town helped us with containers and transport and their generosity was amazing. They really took this event to heart and gave it 100% support. We had a whole team of people ferrying people to and from the meal. Tesco and the Coop provided all the food and accompaniments, including crackers, table cloths and bottles of wine - there was nothing for us to buy, everything was provided for. It was a wonderful occasion, better than last year as we have revamped kitchen facilities with decent ovens and an industrial dishwasher, paid for from fundraising and a loan from Worcester Diocese. We now have such a wonderful community resource with our kitchen that this raises the possibility of further similar events.”

Portsmouth Cathedral hosted a five-course lunch on Christmas Day for 60 people in a joint event with FoodCycle, a charity that creates meals from surplus food. 

In an interview with the Radio Times, Prime Minister Theresa May said she would be celebrating Christmas as she has always done for the past 20 years – including paying a visit to a lunch organised by churches in her Maidenhead constituency for the elderly. Here three churches and a cathedral describe similar events they will be hosting on Christmas Day for groups such as rough sleepers, people living in hostels, refugees and asylum seekers and people alone on Christmas Day.

Lunch for rough sleepers and people living in hostels and temporary accommodation

The Church of the Apostles in Miles Platting, Manchester, is inviting up to 150 rough sleepers and people living in hostels and temporary accommodation for Christmas dinner on Christmas Day.

Rev Ellie Trimble, priest-in-charge, writes:  “We have a weekly lunch on Sunday for around 60 to 80 homeless and vulnerably housed people called ‘Food for All’ and Christmas Day this year falls on a Sunday so we decided we would continue with this as normal. FareShare, who distribute good food destined for waste, will be providing the food for us. We have a team of volunteers, some from the congregation and also guests and volunteers coming in as part of the Greater Manchester Winter Night Shelter. We have a new kitchen at the Church of the Apostles, partly funded by the Diocese of Manchester mission development fund and the lottery. This has made catering on this scale much easier and we also have two halls. We received a donation from Kellogg’s to decorate the church hall for the winter night shelter and to pay for activities over Christmas. We’ll have entertainment on Christmas Day – we’ve got a choir booked and we already have 120 presents wrapped for guests. We will be repeating this meal on New Year’s Day as this falls on a Sunday too.”

Lunch for asylum seekers and refugees

Sanctus, a social enterprise based at St Mark’s Church, Stoke on Trent, supporting asylum seekers and refugees, will coordinate lunch for 200 people on Christmas Day.

Rev Sally Smith, team vicar of St Mark’s, and chief executive of Sanctus, said: “We’ve been running the Christmas Day lunch for refugees and asylum seekers over the past four years from the church hall, but this year it will be hosted by the local YMCA, where they have better kitchen facilities. We will have volunteers working on Christmas Day from Sanctus and others, including the chef at the YMCA. The Archdeacon of Stoke on Trent, Matthew Parker and the Bishop of Stafford, Geoff Annas, will also volunteer their help. The local Moat House hotel will donate 50 turkey dinners and YMCA minibuses will be used to transport people to the lunch. For many people attending, it will be the first time that they have celebrated Christmas. For others, it will be the first time they have celebrated Christmas as Christians.” 

Lunch for people alone at Christmas

Liz Bloomer, churchwarden of St Michael and All Angels Church in Stourport, Worcestershire, writes about how the church will host a dinner for people on their own on Christmas Day. 

“We held our first Christmas Day dinner last year and around 40 people came, including volunteers, many of whom were on their own too. This year, we have had the kitchen in the church hall refurbished and are on course to cater for more people. Tesco is providing most of the food and the Coop is providing everything around it – crackers, mugs, After Eights, and table cloths. Turkeys will be cooked across the town and vegetables prepped on Christmas Eve. Lifts are provided for people coming to the dinner as transport on Christmas Day can be difficult. We have a whole team of people to welcome guests and serve them drinks. It was fabulous last year and the whole town got behind it with volunteers, loans of equipment, and gift donations. It really brought out the kindness of people in Stourport and Kidderminster.”

Portsmouth Cathedral will host a three-course lunch for up to 60 people on Christmas Day in a joint event with FoodCycle, a charity that creates meals from surplus food.  

Canon Peter Leonard, from Portsmouth Cathedral, writes: “This will be the first time we have hosted a Christmas Day lunch at the cathedral. We already run a regular Tuesday lunch club for the elderly and we have worked with FoodCycle before. FoodCycle will be providing food donated to them by the local supermarkets and they won’t know what they are getting until 4.00pm on Christmas Eve. A FoodCycle volunteer will make biscuits and package them up as gifts and one of the supermarkets has donated a voucher that will allow us to buy drinks for the guests.  The cathedral volunteers will provide transport and one of the local churches, St Simon’s, is lending its minibus.  The meal is for people who are alone on Christmas Day, or who might otherwise not get a Christmas meal. We are getting a lot of enquiries from a lot of different organisations.”

Deborah Walton and Nicola Turner write about the impact of Wolverhampton Pioneer Ministries on the lives of their young congregation  

“Wolverhampton Pioneer Ministries is a Fresh Expression of Church that has been going since 2007 and we work with 16 to 30 year olds in the city centre. Half the congregation could be described as ‘churched’ young adults who have been brought up in the church and the other half ‘unchurched’ with very limited experience of church, or none at all. Many in this latter group could be described as marginalised young adults.  We help members of our community to find out about the Christian faith by encouraging them to read the Bible and lead prayers. Our community meets every week on Sunday evenings for worship, we hold morning prayers each morning at 9am on Tuesdays through to Fridays in a local coffee shop. We also run other activities during the week through our chaplaincy team.  For the ‘churched’ young adults we offer opportunities which they might not get in a parish or a local church to lead sung worship, preach and lead prayers.  These opportunities enable them to explore their own leadership gifts. As a result, we have a high rate of young adults going forward for ordination or to lead Christian Unions at University or to take up gap year missional work.

We train some of the older young adults to be chaplains and volunteer with our chaplaincy, Bluefish Chaplaincy.  Our chaplains make weekly visits to a variety of different places: a YMCA homeless hostel; a young adults online radio station; and The Way, the new youth zone in Wolverhampton. Our chaplains visit for an hour or so each week and offer listening. Sitting with someone and listening to them can be very valuable, we also provide emergency support where there is a crisis for any of the young people or young adults connected with the projects where we offer weekly chaplaincy. Through Bluefish Chaplaincy we potentially reach three to four hundred young people or young adults every week.

We have had quite a dramatic impact in a range of ways, other than people coming to faith.   We have seen people learn to read by coming to morning prayers and Bible reading every day. We have encouraged people into work and we have offered people internships to help them through a difficult period of life.  

The award was for Wolverhampton Pioneer Ministries as a community, not for us as staff. We have some people in our community who have never won an award before. This means so much to them that after Christmas the award will go ‘on tour’ and each member of the community will take it in turns to have the award in their home for a week.”

Deborah Walton, Project Team Leader and Nicola Turner, Young Adult Outreach Coordinator

Listen to an interview with Deborah and Nicola