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Melanie Frew visits the third Community Project Award winner.
One of this year’s Church Community Project Award winners was Morison Memorial Church in Clydebank. Its aim is to be an ‘Open Church’, serving the community seven days a week. The mainstay of the project is a weekly café. With so many successful lunch clubs and cafés running in churches throughout the UK, what sets this one apart?
Less than eight miles from the centre of Glasgow, Morison Memorial Church sits in the civic heart of a community that has seen upheaval after upheaval during the church’s 114 years of life. On the nights of the 13 and 14 March 1941, the Luftwaffe executed a brutal attack on Clydebank, dealing a blow from which the town never fully recovered. Clydebank suffered a massive loss of housing; only eight houses out of a total of 12,000 remained undamaged in any way. Many schools and churches perished. Morison Memorial Evangelical Union Congregational Church was the exception and remained undamaged. It now stands as the oldest building in the area.
Hardly a single street in the area was without a fatal casualty. Jimmy McBride, who would describe himself as a long standing member of the church were it not for his failing legs, was the only person to survive the raid out of his household of nine. Jimmy is one of the helpers at the café held each Thursday at the church. The café was started five years ago as a response to more recent changes in the area. It now hosts over 60 eat-in customers each week and a thriving take-away service, with a team of up to 18 helpers. Both visitors and helpers have their stories.
Helen McVean, who has been involved in the project from the start, was not available to meet me at the church, but we met at her home where she lives with her husband, Walter. Helen and Walter have been members of the church since the 1960s and, in her time, Helen has been church secretary, pastoral carer, elder, youth worker and, more recently, instrumental in setting up the café, along with Isabelle Ferguson and Jimmy McBride. Although now incapacitated by liver cancer following a virus 20 years ago, you can see signs of the motivator, her words ‘bossy boots’, who saw the need to reach out to the community to offer a no-strings-attached sanctuary from the loneliness and pressures of everyday life.
the extremes of life
The pressures of everyday life in Clydebank certainly can be extreme. Clydebank is the town with the highest death rate from asbestos poisoning in the UK, it also has one of the highest suicide rates amongst young males, with the nearby Erskine Bridge providing a ‘popular’ location. The asbestos poisoning is a hang over from Clydebank’s industrial past. The majority of the population worked in the shipyards of the Clyde, with the dust from the insulating material lying in piles large enough to make snowballs from. The church itself has not escaped the ravages of asbestosis, having lost several active members to the disease in the past few years.
With the shipyards and the other major employer in the area, Singer the sewing machine manufacturers, now closed, there are few job opportunities in the area. Those that exist are often minimum wage, temporary and employ more women than men, leaving the men with few options. The theory of all call centres going to India does not fit in with the Clydebank experience. There is also new housing with, for example, a housing development of 1,200 houses proposed in the proximity of the church. But the fear is that Clydebank will become a dormitory town for Glasgow commuters with no life of its own.
The church has found a more urgent cost of development. The Clydebank Redevelopment Board is undertaking extensive clearance of the industrial buildings and pollution from the shipyards just behind the church. As a small group of us gathered for a short service in the church, the ground shook continually and you could hear the roof tiles struggling to hold on above our heads as concrete was being broken by heavy machinery. The church will have to prove structural damage to claim compensation. But David Pattie, the minister at Morison for the past six years, was optimistic. If there is damage and the building needs remedial work, it may be the opportunity to address the access issues it currently has, with steep steps up to the sanctuary and down to the halls.
Among the regular customers is a group of seven social workers based at the council offices across the road. Why do they come in each week, especially when there is a pleasant looking pub just across the road? Vicky Buchanan from the Older People’s Team was enthusiastic about the home baking and the prices, but it seemed to be the friendliness of the welcome that gave it the edge. And that welcome has to be good to compensate for the fact that at any time during their lunch break, various members of the team can be interrupted by their clients. On cue, Tony Asbridge of the Sensory Impairment Team was given an enthusiastic hug by one of his regulars.
unconditional love
The church is across the road from the local courts. On any given day lawyers, the procurator fiscal, court staff and the accused can be found eating at tables next to each other. As well as a warm welcome and laughter, the church offers unconditional support. One day a young man who had been convicted of his first offence came into the church and was able to talk over his experience. He came back after his sentencing the following week to let the team know how he had done.
Ian McNee is a regular at the café. He is not a member at Morison but turns up each Thursday at 11.45 sharp. He explains that the food is terrible, ‘homemade rubbish’, and the staff always rude. The twinkle in his eye gives him away. A widower and a veteran of the Second World War, his only complaint is that it is only open once a week. He used to visit a lunch club at a local Baptist church, but that closed and so his time at Morison is a highlight in his week, usually sitting at the same table as many customers have formed strong personal relationships with their waiting staff. He enjoys the bookstall and the extra cake or two he is allowed to take home each week.
Morison aims to be a seven-day-a-week open church, offering itself to the community. Opening the church from 12-2 every Thursday was its response to 9/11, a place to find a moment of peace, prayer and reflection. After significant events or disasters, up to forty people may come into the church. The space provided enabled a mother and daughter to be reunited after having visited the church separately on consecutive weeks and then being able to meet together.
So why should the Open Church at Morison qualify for a Community Award? It is a café, they open the church. Does that make it so different from any number of churches? Perhaps not, but it most certainly a very special place. Anne Shaw, the café’s main cook, explains that the project has not only helped the community but that there is now more fellowship in the church. Working together has brought them closer together. When she quips that they are now all certified, she is referring to the hygiene certificates they have obtained. It may be a harsh sense of humour formed out of financial hardship and physical suffering, but they do not need to empathise with the local community on some cerebral level; they have been through it themselves.
Melanie Frew was the guest editor for the May edition of Reform
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The 2006 Community Project Awards are
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