About

Community Chaplains is a voluntary Christian chaplaincy supporting stronger community.
We aim to:

• strengthen links between resource and need, including working with referrals from voluntary and statutory agencies for local communities.
• provide pastoral and spiritual support and care for those wishing to access Chaplaincy services.
• build caring community relationships in the hope of gaining permission to share the Christian faith in a non-imposing manner. ​

Our Story

In 2016 the founder of Community Chaplains had conversations with our local Met. Police Chief Superintendant, and subsequently his successor, concerning the social and non-criminal issues facing the police. These conversations included our local MP’s and others, and initiated a proposal to develop a pastoral or chaplaincy service to the community.

Our public services are very overstretched and would welcome support for demand reduction and social prescribing.

​Police constabularies throughout the UK have around 80% of their demand from non-criminal issues; 30% of which are to do with mental health.
 
Community Chaplains hope to thoroughly engage with their local areas to become community ‘champions’ or ‘ambassadors’ or ‘navigators’, as well as ministers of spiritual and practical help, and to support and strengthen their local communities. 

A Perspective of Need

There are growing issues of isolation and loneliness in the UK and particularly the borough of Richmond where Community Chaplains has begun to operate. Individual Community Chaplains may find this a particular area of ministry in the way that Anna Chaplains has been developed by the Bible Reading Fellowship.

In 2017 Richmond Parish Lands Charity (RPLc) and Hampton Fuel Allotment charity (HFAc) published ‘On the Edge’, a survey of demographics and needs for the borough.

Community Chaplains and the Local Church

In 2015 Theos published a research document entitled: A very Modern Ministry: Chaplaincy in the UK.
 
Here are some quotes from their research:
“Chaplaincy ... seems to be thriving in the paradoxical situation of being a faith and belief phenomenon which is growing in a public square which often seems increasingly secular.
The story of chaplaincy, then, is perhaps not so much bucking a trend of the modern world as representing the future for the engagement of faith and belief groups in the public square.”
 
“Not only are they engaging in public spaces, rather than waiting in their own religious spaces, but a large range of people, a significant majority of whom are not paid a salary or stipend for their work and also tend not to be the traditional form of religious professional (i.e. they do not tend to be ordained).”
 
“It is a ministry that is innovative, fitting in with the way British society is, rather than how religious and belief groups might hope it to be; a ministry that provides real practical benefits and services for organisations on their terms, as well as for religious groups alone; a ministry that goes to where people actually are, rather than waiting for them to come to religion. As a result, chaplaincy fits especially well into modern British society.”
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