Our Street Pastors teams have been working in Inverness for 4 weeks now, offering every kind of practical help and care on the streets between 10pm and 4am on Fridays, plus an additional Saturday per month.

We’ve helped diffuse disagreements before they escalate into fights, escorted vulnerable young ladies to taxis, stayed with people in genuine danger until professional help arrives, and generally tried to make the streets feel safer and encouraged people to enjoy the city’s nightlife responsibly. We’ve had an amazing response from the public who seem to love us being there and admire what we do. It’s very humbling.

Our M.O. is listening, caring and helping. In our capacity as Street Pastors we don’t preach (we leave that for Sunday morning). But it’s amazing how many people want to ask things like: “so, what’s a pastor?”, “what makes you want to do this?”, and “tell me more about this Jesus then”. Church may scare a lot of people off, but there’s a genuine inquisitiveness in most people to want to know about Jesus and to want to dig a conversation out of you when they can see that you’re a bit different in a good kind of way. People even ask us to pray for them.

Even self-professed atheists.

Two guys once called out to us from the other side of the street in a rather sarcastic tone “Lord, save me!”, came over to us, and initiated a conversation with us that started with “you’re just here to try and convert people to Christianity aren’t you?”. We assured them that we weren’t and reiterated the now familiar words about listening, caring and helping. One of the guys then asked us if we’d read Richard Dawkins book “The God Delusion” and pressed home the point that maybe we hadn’t thoroughly researched what we believe as Christians.

Our loving Heavenly Father spoke very clearly to one of our team at that point who asked him very matter of fact “do you have a sore neck today?”. He was blown away. He’d strained his neck snowboarding that very day and it was still rather painful, though you wouldn’t have know to look at him. We explained that God is our Heavenly Father who loves every single one of us regardless of what we believe about Him and two of us offered to minister healing to him right there on the street. He agreed. Thirty seconds later his mouth was wide open as he told us how all the pain had gone and as he tried to come to terms with the experience.

“It’s not what you read, it’s who you know”, I explained with a slightly mischievous grin, “now check it out thoroughly, I don’t want you deluded about God’s love for you”. We shared the same sense of humour and he spent quite some time rolling his neck and saying “no, it’s definitely better”. “We’ll leave you to enjoy the rest of your evening now, but I guess you have a lot to think about”. We shook hands with the kind of affection that hadn’t been there at the beginning of our conversation and he said to me “can I have your card?”

Street Pastors aren’t there to preach. But we are there to listen, to care, and to offer every kind of help. And we have a Heavenly Father who loves Inverness and its people.