Hello I'm Andy Kerr

Hello, I’m Andy Kerr, Managing Chaplain at HMP Ford Open Prison in Sussex.

Open Prison, I hear you say, what is that? Well, it’s a prison where instead of taking away someone’s liberty we start to give liberty back to them. It’s a very different prison from Cat A, B or C prisons, which appear mostly on our TV screens through dramas or documentaries. For example, a third of the people detained at Ford are working in ordinary jobs in the community, engaging with you or me every day: forklift truck drivers, office workers, gas fitters, crane operators and retail workers. We also release people home for 2 days a month and 4 nights once a month to rebuild family relationships, start parenting again and resettle. Onsite education and a college provide maths and English, with business studies, painting and decorating, engineering, drywall lining, and bricklaying courses amongst other opportunities.

How did I get to work in Prison?

I started out in life as a baker/confectioner, went into retail, delivered cars all over the UK, worked with children with emotional and behavioural difficulties, spent years working on a housing estate in the Midlands that BBC had unhelpfully entitled ‘Estate from Hell’ in their documentary, was called into Baptist Ministry and led a couple of churches. It was whilst leading a church in the South that I found many of the people I met on the streets swigging lager or smoking cannabis seemed to have offences in their backstory. Some had spent a long time in prison and some were in and out more regularly.

I was struck early on in my ministry by Jesus’ manifesto in Luke 4.

18 “The Spirit of the Lord is on me,

    because he has anointed me

    to proclaim good news to the poor.

He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners

    and recovery of sight for the blind,

to set the oppressed free,

19 to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour.”

If we the church are Christ’s body, then the ‘me’ in his manifesto becomes ‘us’! It really is that simple. So I left my church and started working at HMP Ford before going full time at HMP Lewes, and then finally coming back to HMP Ford in 2021.

Can I encourage you as churches to embrace His manifesto as well? I have found no greater delight, than to see the Holy Spirit of God working in prisoners’ lives, and the opportunity to join in with Him is a profound joy and a humbling experience.

Lastly a thought: the other day I met a young man in London who had been at HMP Ford. He said to me ‘how are you my brother?’!

“I was a stranger and you welcomed me...” [Matthew 25:35]

Reflection from Revd Helen Cameron, Moderator of the Free Churches Group

As I write this newsletter a story is in the headlines, not for long I fear, of a fatality in the Mediterranean near the island of Lampedusa when a boat of 45 refugees sank. The boat contained women, men and children and only 4 people survived. Such stories are now commonplace and there is a real and present danger that we will soon stop seeing or stop hearing such stories. In contrast, the story of the loss of the submersible near the wreck of the Titanic, equally sad, filled the headlines for a very long time and with a greater intensity. It was not treated as a commonplace story in any way.

 The death of any human being,, whether accidental, foreseen or expected is of significance and is noteworthy to those who loved them, who saw them as family, friends, or community, and peers. As Christian people we are comforted by the words of Jesus recorded in Matthew’s Gospel 10: 29-31 which promise that God attends to the smallest and the least, and notices us,

“Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? Yet not one of them will fall to the ground apart from your father. Even the hairs of your head are all counted”.

Equally comforting but very challenging are the words in the Letter to the Romans chapter 2:11,

“God shows no partiality” or ‘God has no favourites”.

We struggle, I think, as a nation or group of nations to show that same impartiality. Some refugees (such as those from Ukraine) have been welcomed with generosity and been able to access well established systems of support - and that is magnificent-but others have not. Our partiality towards those we treat with hostility and those who receive hospitality is clear for all to see. Some refugees are granted safe passage and others are left to making dangerous sea crossings at the hands of smuggling gangs.

According to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), around 90% of the world’s refugees come from countries in or close to war and conflict, and almost 90% of all refugees live in countries neighbouring their country of origin. Wars make refugees. In the long term, the only solution to the unprecedented numbers of refugees in the world is the cessation of war and conflict, and a world without war. This is the clear lesson from the current Russia–Ukraine conflict.

 In international law there is no “illegal” or “bogus” asylum seeker. Anyone has the right to apply for asylum in any country that has signed the 1951 UN Refugee Convention, and to remain there until authorities have assessed their claim. Plans to relocate asylum seekers to another country are hostile; they penalise already humiliated people, and also contravene international law. The criterion for determining refugee status is fleeing danger and seeking safety, not the means of travel or routes taken, not ethnicity, not the colour of skin, not nationality.

All refugees have to be treated equally.

If we hold to the promise of the Kingdom of God that God’s love is for all and that God has no favourites, how do we accept a situation where people’s human rights, and human dignity, are deemed to disappear at a border? Jesus’ followers are familiar with his story about the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:29-37), where a man despised for his faith offered compassion and care for a wounded man. The story illustrates how compassion is not restricted by borders and identity. Biblical witness carries a call for the protection and safety of people whose lives are in danger while their case is processed (Numbers 35). God called on Moses to set up cities of refuge to ensure this.

Emerging from this biblical wisdom is the root of the contemporary movement and network of City of Sanctuary, which has led to the development of the Church of Sanctuary work. See here.

The principle of sanctuary is built on protective safety, and it challenges hostility with hospitality and welcome in all human faith and practice. Hospitality is the established way of handling difference and transcending borders and barriers, and expressing respect for the worth of people, especially those considered to be least worthy and most excluded.

So how might we be involved in creating and developing cultures of welcome, hospitality and safety? Several members of the Free Churches Group are leading in work of this kind.

Church of Sanctuary is a faith-based initiative, a call to prophetic Christian witness. It is an expression of hospitality as a clear challenge to hostility. The aim is to take steps to build protective hospitality in ways that are mutually enriching. The hope is that churches will become places for all and proud to foster welcome, hospitality and safety to people fleeing violence and persecution. This would be a clear demonstration of Christian discipleship.

Sanctuary, or hospitality-with-safety, is a long-standing prophetic theme of Scripture. It is the most repeated ethical requirement in the Hebrew Scriptures. The foundational biblical principle is: love your neighbour as yourself (Leviticus 19:18) and love the stranger as yourself (Leviticus 19:34). This attitude is echoed in Jesus’ teaching about how we treat the neighbour and the outsider (Matthew 25:35-40; Luke 10:29-37). In ancient times sanctuary in churches used to assist those claiming to be innocent of a crime. More recently it has operated to protect immigrants or refugees facing deportation by the state. Now Sanctuary Churches who wish to greet new arrivals fleeing from danger to their lives may make a real difference for vulnerable people.

The Hebrew prophets consistently demanded justice for “the widow, the orphan and the stranger”. Today these groups may include vulnerable older people, children in danger, and “asylum seekers” and refugees. May we be a justice seeking Church!

If you want to know more contact here.

New NHS England Chaplaincy Guidelines Published on 2nd August 2023

The Free Churches Group (FCG) warmly welcomes the NHS England’s NHS Chaplaincy – guidelines for NHS managers on pastoral, spiritual and religious care, which recognises the invaluable contribution that Chaplains make to health and care and sets the ambition for inclusive chaplaincy services in all NHS settings.  

The FCG is developing a chaplaincy hub to resource and equip those interested in chaplaincy. As part of this, we are actively engaged in supporting healthcare chaplains who come from a Free Church tradition to provide high-quality, evidence-based and patient centred chaplaincy care through a varied programme of development opportunities. As such, we are delighted to see the emphasis the guidelines place on training, support and supervision for chaplains including the recognition that chaplains should engage in a programme of Continuous Professional Development, ‘which may include attending external training.’ We hope that this will lead to greater budgetary support from within organisations to enable chaplains to take advantage of training and development opportunities.

The FCG is pleased to see the drive for high quality appointments in the guidelines, with a clear expectation for employers to seek the endorsement of a respective religion or belief community before the appointment of a chaplain. For candidates from Group Members of the FCG, this will enable employers to benefit from the quality assurance arrangements that we have in place. We recognise that chaplaincy is a distinct calling requiring particular skills and, as such, we agree with the statement in the guidelines that providing pastoral care for people in a faith community setting or in other areas of NHS care is not, on its own, necessarily sufficient to demonstrate suitability. Therefore, the FCG fully supports reference in the guidelines to use professional appointment advisors to assist with the recruitment process from the outset. We also commend the direction to make use of clinical simulations consisting of a chaplain-patient encounter observed by those experienced in chaplaincy as part of selection processes.

As an ecumenical body of twenty-seven Church/Parachurch groups the FCG represents approximately 10,000 congregations across England and Wales. The guidelines recognise the role chaplains can play connecting with faith groups to help organisations understand local needs and creating opportunities to improve services and address health inequalities. We strongly encourage the development of communication between NHS chaplaincy teams and Free Churches.

The FCG is disappointed that the new guidelines do not contain suggested staffing ratios as included in the guidance published in 2003 and 2015. These were widely used by chaplaincy teams to both submit business cases for additional staffing as well as defending possible cuts. We are, therefore, grateful that the members of the Chaplaincy Forum for Pastoral, Spiritual and Religious Care in Health have produced a staffing framework to complement the guidelines.

We recognise the considerable work involved in producing these new guidelines and would like to thank all those involved for their time and effort. The guidelines make clear that high quality holistic care within the NHS in England cannot be achieved without the full integration of chaplaincy. We look forward to continuing our work enabling healthcare chaplains and chaplaincy to flourish.

Joint civil society statement on the passage of the Illegal Migration Act, July 2023

The Government’s Illegal Migration Act doesn’t represent us or the society we all want to live in.

We’ve joined hundreds of organisations with a clear message:

We will always fight for People's right to seek safety and a better life. 

The statement is available to read here. 

For more information, please visit here.

FCG Chaplaincy Hub Offer for all Chaplains - Nourishing Roots with Paul Rochester

Join us for a day of reflection and spiritual renewal with the Free Churches Group, led by Bp. Paul Rochester, held in the beautiful and peaceful surrounds of the Royal Foundation of St Katherine, London on Tuesday 10th October 2023 from 10 am to 4 pm.

Paul is the General Secretary of the Free Churches Group and an ordained minister in the Church of God of Prophecy where his is a Senior Pastor for a Church in South London and has regional oversight for eight churches. Paul wrote his MA Dissertation on silence and Pentecostalism.

The day will include refreshments on arrival, mid-morning, and mid-afternoon as well as a hot buffet lunch.

Registration will be from 9.30am onward for a 10.00am start.

The cost for the day will be £20 for FCG chaplains, with a small number of places available for non-FCG chaplains from September.

Register your place here.

For more information, please contact Mark Newitt at mark.newitt@freechurches.org.uk

Visit here for more events.

Photo courtesy by Royal Foundation of St Katherine.