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Meeting the Bishop of Manchester

Bishop of Manchester

On 16th December 2008 the staff and residents of Liberty House, Salford were invited by Reverend Henry Martin of Saint James Church of England to a very special evening at his church. The Bishop of Manchester was coming to meet his congregation and members of the wider community along with over 100 parishes in Manchester. We were also invited to decorate a Christmas tree at the church which best represented Liberty House.

We saw this as a real privilege and a great opportunity to let people know about what we do and also to meet other services in the local community.  We needed to be inspirational so Lisa asked the team and residents to each write down on a piece of paper a few words which to them described Liberty House. We took the tree to the church in the morning and hung the decorations….words such as ‘’a place of sanctuary’’ and ‘’restoring hope & dignity’’ were amongst many other impressive quotations and the Reverend commented that it was just what he was hoping for.

The evening came and Lisa attended the church along with 2 residents from Liberty House who were all very nervous about meeting the Bishop and Lisa was surprised that one of the residents could recite The Lords Prayer without reading it!  We waited anxiously whilst the Bishop worked his way around the congregation meeting people until it was our turn.

The Bishop seemed really interested in talking to the residents…..he asked lots of questions about our project and asked the residents how they became homeless and what it was like living at Liberty House. The Bishop even read all of the quotations hung on our tree and was most pleased. He thought ‘’restoring hope & dignity’’ was very important to people.

Lisa made some really good links with other services such as The Broughton Trust and the residents came away with a glow and felt they had been part of something worth while.

We are hoping this is just the start of our involvement in many more events like these.

Lisa Bennett-Thornton
Acting Project Manager
Liberty House