Soul Purpose on Facebook

If you're on facebook - find, sign up to and contribute to the Soul Purpose Facebook group! Keep the past inspiring the present

Soul Purpose Clip

This is a clip from the 1st Soul Purpose as found on the BBC....click here

How was it for you?

Faces have been painted, gardens have been dug, murals have been created and an alleyway has been cleared, songs have been sung - all this and more was Soul Purpose 2007.
So how was it for you? Ok, alright, not bad or something more? We want to hear from you, we'll be posting more stories and pictures in the next few days but we want your thoughts - so post a comment so all the world can see what you thought of SP07

It's a rubbish problem to have

We have a problem and it's rubbish. No really, quite literally rubbish. All the skip companies are taking the weekend off and a small and very good natured bunch of some 100 young people
are taking the weekend on to clear up Ditherington. So how do you get rid of the rubbish? I have till Saturday to solve the problem...

Buckled bikes and alleyways

So yesterday I went down to Wingfield Close to check out some potential project sites and I lock my bike up against a metal fence and off I go. I clamber up this overgrown, litter strewn dump of an alleyway that has been a dumping ground for years and ruined the back of people's gardens.

Then I have a conversation with a local man who shows me his garden (very nice) and he tells me how he no longer knows his neighbours, how the community spirit has disappeared and he's afraid to even ask people their name any more.

By the time I get back to my bike I understand a little of what he meant, the chain has been cut and my bike dumped over a fence buckling the back wheel. No point to it, just bored, meaningless vandalism, although I guess the lads that did it found it funny briefly.

I move on and visit some more residents who for a variety of reasons are struggling with the upkeep of their properties and gardens. You get a sense of how poverty (in its many varied forms) undermines people's ability and capacity to manage. There seems little point.

Well I'm not accepting that - not in my town. I don't accept that there should be families in one of England's prosperous county towns should be left to feel helpless and hopeless, if they do then the church is failing in its mission. Soul Purpose can make a difference in those homes and families lives and through a practical demonstration perhaps people can sense or feel just even for a moment that God loves them. Let's hope so.

Long live the Revolution

Greetings Comrades

It’s been two weeks since my last communication when I set some pretty challenging targets of 70 people signed up for SP07 while I was away on holiday. It seems that I was too easy on you, too soft, not demanding or challenging enough as you waltzed through that target with 87 delegates plus small team leaders. I had planned on setting 100 as your next mission but it all seems too easy now….so with just 10 DAYS left can we get to 120? Can you round up, press gang, lasso, kidnap, arm twist, blackmail or otherwise persuade anyone not signed up to do so. If we can get to 120 perhaps we can get Simon Iddon to do something really silly (feel free to post ideas at http://soulpurposeshrewsbury.blogspot.com/) and that would be fun for everyone….the possibilities are well endless really.

So where are we at with everything else? Well halls have been booked, bouncy castles ordered, projects scouted, tools bought, and flyers printed which leads me cunningly to my next point. This Sunday, May the 20^th at 3pm from the Church of the Holy Spirit (drum roll please) well - we’re delivering the flyers to the whole area to tell them Soul Purpose is coming and we need your help. The more there are, the quicker the job gets done, simple as that. We’ve 5000 flyers to deliver but this is more than just a flyer through a letterbox this is 5000 homes to inform, tens of thousands of people to reach (who knows – the house you deliver to, could be a changed life forever) so please there won’t be anything better to do (even if it’s raining).

Speaking of which, lovely weather isn’t it? Nothing at all like the weather we experienced on holiday, in Cuba where it was boring and sunny every day. Cuba is an amazing place and is one of the very few communist countries left in the world. All over Cuba are banners and posters with slogans from the revolution, things like ‘Long live socialism’, ‘Defend the revolution’ and stuff like that. Anyway it made me see that Fidel Castro and Che Guevara and co were all motivated by a desire to help the poor, Che Guevara even said that it was his aim to ‘create a new man’, people who were motivated to help one another. That’s good and I agree with that but I think the best way of doing that is through showing the love of Jesus Christ to people in practical ways that they can understand like sorting their garden. I don’t know if you realised this but Soul Purpose is revolutionary, it wants to change society and remove injustice, it wants to encourage people to know and love their neighbour and to do it all with a smile on our face. Who wouldn’t want to be a part of that?

So sign up, get your mates to sign up, come and deliver flyers and pray like crazy that everything falls into place and the sun shines all weekend because Soul Purpose is only 10 days away!

Long live the revolution

Phil