On Sunday evening when I would normally have been watching England pull a rabbit out of a hat against Slovakia I was walking and praying the streets of Croydon.
I set off on this 15km/10m walk after Croydon Vineyard’s 4pm service. My route followed the boundary between the 4 Parliamentary constituencies of West Croydon, South Croydon, East Croydon and North Croydon and Streatham. When I first thought this would be a good thing to do I thought I’d do the perimeter of the 4…that would have been 60km. Something to do but over a period of time I think.
To help with praying for different constituencies as part of the Prophetic Encouragement Watch Party I wanted to aggregate different datasets and understand a bit more about places I don’t know, and their relationship to each other. I’ll post a separate blog post on how ChatGPT has been helping me to make ‘data-driven prayer’ possible.
As I walked I prayed for different things. I prayed for each of the existing MPs and what the next week might hold for them. Sometimes my prayers were inspired by data, other times by things I walked past, other times where the Holy Spirit led me. I called out principalities “squatting like a toad” in the name of Jesus. On a few occasions I stopped to send an email to someone who had been brought to mind or where the prayer had raised particular needs.
It was amazing how much of the route was the same as roads that I regularly travel down in order to get to the hotel in Crystal Palace where we host Vineyard English School. This was a good reminder that this exercise can be done as part of my everyday, rather than needing me to do all 10 miles in one go.
Prayers
Starting at Harris Academy, Kendra Hall Road (where Croydon Vineyard meets), I focused first on Croydon South, our constituency since we moved to Croydon in 2014 (although boundary changes now mean we’re in Croydon West). Here I learned 18% of the population are over 64. As I prayed around this particular point I celebrated the value of experience and asked God to inspire ministries that unlock the gifts and talents of “the well lived and the well loved”. The walk through the South also had this theme of it being a constituency that is home to great collaboration and co-operation.
Walking through Park Hill Park a brilliant variety of people were enjoying their Sunday evenings. All the tennis courts were in use, as was the basketball court. The playground was full of kids and there were dogwalkers everywhere. It was a place where people were gathered and meeting and enjoying one another’s company.
One of the families we’ve been working with through Vineyard English School are Ahmadiyya Muslims, seeking asylum in the UK from Pakistan. A couple of months ago they shared that they’d been invited to a multi-faith event somewhere in Croydon under the umbrella of Faiths Together in Croydon. I recognise now that it was Park Hill so this gave me a good excuse to pray for them and the wider work of Vineyard English School and the needs of the asylum seeker and refugee communities in Croydon.
Also on this leg of the journey there was a powerful sense of wanting to pray for the 1 in 4.5 people in these constituencies who are under 18 and under the care of someone else in some capacity and all that can be good, or challenging. Praying for the prodigal and the estranged. Asking God to repair the fragments and healing from hurt (not hiding from it). Praying for a new wave of foster carers.
From Park Hill my walk took me down past the Croydon Park Hotel. The council bought this as an investment but it’s now closed down, shuttered and gradually decaying. This contrasts completely with 3 out of the 4 constituencies of Croydon which are brand new. They are new born with a fresh, blank slate.
The most amusing part of my walk happened at this point. As I was praying about God bringing hope to lost causes I heard a roar of celebration from Boxpark and checked in to see just how quickly England had gone from ‘lost cause’ to being in the lead.
The next thing I noted down was a picture of these new Croydon constituencies being sat on “an aquifer of living water” (I don’t know geography well enough to actually know what an aquifer is) but the sense, as I walked towards East Croydon station of the confluence and congruence of different streams. That these constituencies are a place of convening. A real mixing pot and a place again of collaboration that brings great joy.
Something that doesn’t bring great joy is the never ending saga over the redevelopment of central Croydon. The heart of Croydon is a long way from having hope spoken over it. The heartbeat of the centre of Croydon is not in good health at all. My prayers here were for the Kingdom to come for the architects, the landowners, the planning officials, the funders and that the next phase of the story is one that is ambitious for the communities that will call those buildings home.
God’s people should be the first movers with a perspective of hope. Croydon is drowning under the weight of negative language and people doing it down. None of that is The King’s Story.
When God ‘holds my beer’ (in the vein of the meme) it is to outdo and reshape and reimagine our thoughts and hopes and supercharge them. To take our small failings and foibles and transform them. Not just sticky plaster repair, but renewal and healing.
From East Croydon I walked down through the cluster of new blocks of flats. These places seemed to have no facilities for local community and I didn’t spot a local church. Which led me to note down the question: “Who is the vicar for the parishes in the sky around the station? How is that mission field engaged?”
As I saw a bit of road rage I was put in mind of the phrase ‘micro aggressions’. The opposite of that is ‘micro compassions’. Micro compassions bring the Kingdom.
By the time I was walking down Morland Road I was praying for housing in Croydon. One of the things that has come out of Vineyard English School is the need to find more landlords and increasing the availability and quality of private stock. The neighbouring house to ours is a privately rented house with various tenants, and it’s owned by some Christians. What would a Christian housing association look like in Croydon? What would the Kingdom of God look like if expressed through the work of landlords, landowners and developers?
Part way down Morland Crescent is a kid’s playground. It’s a very sad sight with various empty spaces where toys should have been and the swings chained up. That abandonment and neglect is starting to become the default way in which the public realm is experienced. A little further on I came to a school with a very nice playground locked away behind a fence that’s obviously only available during school hours. The juxtaposition of the two spoke to levels of inequality. We know that in Croydon income inequality in 2022-23 was 21.1 (the worst is Kensington and Chelsea at 34.3 points between richest and poorest) but that has only reduced by 1.5 since 2011.
The route then brought me through the Regina Road estate and writ large the inequality that is so visible in people’s day to day experience. I hadn’t realised that I would be walking through such a symbol of the maladministration that has been going on in terms of people’s lives in the borough. What I also hadn’t appreciated was that Regina Road, and specifically one of the condemned buildings, faces towards Saffron Square. From that building which would have been full of mould and unsafe for people to live in, people would look out of their window down towards the centre of Croydon and see the conspicuous wealth and the focus of local administration of inward investment over caring and protecting the people living under their care.
From there I made my way past South Norwood Lake and Grounds where a cricket match was just breaking up. At the far side of the park I came across a banner for the KeepFit4Christ Sports Club and it was just another wonderful reminder of the breadth and variety that exists in the way that the people of Jesus build community and invest in one another.
The final note I made was something brought to mind at the point I had reached Streatham and Croydon North. In 2019 turnout was below 67% and mapped onto the 76,000 population of the constituency means ~23,000 didn’t vote. Do Christians have any legitimate reason for being part of that number? Is it disillusionment? Easy for us to be disillusioned by human failings but our source of hope of Jesus. The antidote to disillusionment is to be prayerfully engaged in seeking more of the Kingdom to come into the halls of government. Is it apathy? God’s people don’t get to be apathetic. We’re called to love and advocacy. Engaging with the issues that impact on people’s lives in non-negotiable.
Churches I passed along the way
I know nothing about the churches I encountered during the walk but when I found one I stopped to pray for it and its role in its local community.
The first church I noticed wasn’t until I had passed East Croydon – Addiscombe Baptist Church. As I prayed for the church and its ministry I just had the phrase “A bellyful of joy” pop into my head.
At the end of the road is the Woodside Green Christian Centre but it seems like it’s not operating any more as that (the website is dead, some of the doors were chained up) but that maybe it’s now home to the Prayer House Worship Centre. The word I was moved to pray for these brothers and sisters of ours was ‘renewal’.
The third church I passed was St Luke’s Woodside. I had a real sense of God’s delight in the community at St Luke’s and his love for what they’re doing.
Towards the end of the walk I walked past St John’s Congregational Church and the word for them was ‘beacon’ in the twin context: of warning of danger and keeping people safe by discouraging them from going to a particular place, but also as a welcoming light drawing people in to a place of safety.
The final church on the route was St Stephen’s, Norbury and Thornton Heath. The word for this church was “welcome” which was Godincidental with then finding out that a couple of weeks ago a new vicar had been announced. The follow up picture for this church was “flow through hydroelectric turbines”. There is a dam that stores up latent potential over time. The flow through the turbines brings the power.