Do all the good you can, by all the means you can, in all the ways you can, in all the places you can, at all the times you can, to all the people you can, as long
as ever you can.
John Wesley
| Text size: +/-A heart for Pontprennau
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| Pontprennau Community Church toddler group |
With no shops and just one local authority building, there was nowhere for the people of Pontprennau to gather or for neighbour to get to know neighbour – until the Church came along. Laurence Wareing discovers the difference one congregation can make.
The large estate that is home to Pontprennau Community Church in East Cardiff was not designed as a community, says ecumenical minister Deacon Margaret Crompton. “It was just a collection of houses – they didn’t think about community when they were building the estate.”
It’s a familiar story on estates across Britain and one that the Cardiff East Ecumenical Partnership sought to address, first by establishing a worshipping congregation within the Local Authority Community Centre and then, seven years later, realising a dream of opening its own facility – a community centre in which the Pontprennau congregation lives and breathes and provides a space for every type of community group and service, from salsa dancers to chiropodists.
The noisy chatter of the chock-a-block coffee shop provides the background to my conversation with Margaret. It is the purpose-built centre’s ‘shop window’ on to the estate and Margaret can name countless individuals for whom the café, and all the activity that lies behind it, represents the warm heart of Pontprennau.
“It’s a place where people can come for support and company, and build relationships with others in similar circumstances.” Margaret speaks of young professional women who are now at home with a child and feel isolated. “One woman said, ‘I don’t know what I would have done if you weren’t here.’”
Others who thrive in the centre include men and women with special needs – “this is their home because they integrate with others in the normal run of life. There are not many others offering what we’ve got here.”
Upstairs, a well-known utilities company is using the training room and in the hall, where the worshipping congregation meet on Sunday, an exercise group from the local business community is in full swing.
There’s overlap, too, between the congregation and other groups meeting here. Church members are involved in running a toddlers group and the Kendo club is run by a Korean church member who brings a particularly Christian point of view to the spirituality of martial arts. And Margaret herself, of course, is on hand to lend pastoral support to anyone who needs it – “it’s a fantastic job and very special people. They’ve created a warm, welcoming place. I take my hat off to them.”
The Pontprennau enterprise presents such a thriving example of successful community-led ministry, is it a model that could be repeated elsewhere, I wonder? Margaret is cautious. “Success is the wrong question. The thing that has made this project a two-way bridge into the community is the fact that it meets the community’s needs and has been made possible by hard work over twenty years. The key is to know your local community – what will work and what resources do you have?”
Crucially, she says, the Pontprennau congregation needs to remain alert to shifting patterns. “If the families stay, the toddlers will become teenagers. What’s needed here will change.” You have to keep listening in partnership with other community groups, Margaret insists. “They are our eyes and ears and can tell us what the priorities are.”
Pontprennau is changing body, then, but with one warm and strong heart. Together all the parts are making something rather special in this corner of Wales. As I put the phone down, there’s an echo in my head of something St Paul once wrote about the interdependency of the body’s different parts. I realise he could have been writing about Pontprennau.
