The £12 million comes from the Renewal and Reform program, which aims to grow the church’s attendance among all classes, races and generations.
Some of the money will be going towards sports clubs in deprived areas to help alleviate crime and spread the gospel.
One church that will benefit from the money is Christ Church Anerly in South London, who are already running a Christian boxing club for 13-19 year olds and an evangelistic Bible study for ex-offenders.
The pastor there, Rev Matthew Fitter, told Premier he has conducted two funerals for victims of knife crime in his area and that was what persuaded him the boxing club was worth doing.
“The reason that convinced us to go for it is it is definitely distinctively Christian. So, we have a professional boxing coach who comes and does the actual boxing, training, the fitness, the boxing moves, all of those things. But then for the last 10 minutes of every session we have unashamedly Christian content where either an ex-offender, or somebody, shares the difference that Jesus has made to them and so for me, the way that I’m comfortable with it is because it is definitely Christian, both in the way that we set it up and also in the way that we run it.”
The pastor explained how the Christian content had been received by those going to the boxing club: “They’ll have done an hour and 20 minutes of fitness and…
… Read More
—
Click Read More to read the rest of the story from our content source/partners – Premier Christianity News.