Carmarthen: Harvesting for the Kingdom

Captain Clare and Lieutenant Jamie Jones share how the corps has grown in God’s time.

Matching need with mission

We’re a small corps, initially with ‘a cuppa and a chat’ drop-in centre. When we re-launched out of the Covid-19 pandemic, we looked at every part of our programme and honestly asked ourselves three questions: Is it working? Is it God-honouring or missional? How do we evidence the working of Jesus in it?

From there we prayed and were led to develop our coffee shop missionally through the installation of a barista coffee machine and provision of barista training opportunities to help people back into work. Teaming up with the Army’s Employment Plus service, with a focus on our drop-in regulars, our drop-in has developed from ‘a cuppa and a chat’ into a multi-agency hub, which is of greater benefit to those who attend.

Showers of blessing

We lifted it to the Lord, saying: ‘If this is your mission, we need to raise the sum of £5,500.’ It was a massive leap of faith, but we launched the fundraising on the Sunday and within two and a half weeks we had raised the money!

God had approved our mission innovation through the Imagine coffee shop and, 18 months later, one of the original donors and his wife are adherents. They’re with us every Sunday, having integrated completely into our community. They drive 20 miles to get to the corps and have started a Bible study group for those at the drop-in. That’s how God has used and blessed it, evidencing it is his work and not ours.

Giving back to God at Harvest

At Harvest, three quarters of any monetary donations received at corps are used to support mission locally, with the remaining quarter going into the division’s mission innovation fund for all corps to access – this can then help resource new, exciting mission opportunities, such as Imagine. This year, donations we receive will support the great work happening at Imagine. It’s our way of giving back to God and our community.

God in his wisdom pruned and re-planted at our corps after the Covid-19 lockdowns. At that time, when there were so few of us, we couldn’t have anticipated the outcome. Many new people were sent to us and we are now reaping the rewards of that time of regeneration and regrowth. It’s all about God – his timing, his harvest.

Journeying with Jesus

There are four main elements to our corps: we have our church first and foremost, we are blessed with a very fruitful charity shop, we have the coffee shop and our community centre. We are also striving to build our youth and children’s ministry and we’re on a beautiful journey within our fellowship.

Our prayer going forward is that we can reduce our reliance on divisional funding, that people locally will give generously this Harvest and that God will take it, use it, multiply it and bless it to further extend his Kingdom.