Welcome to Maidstone Street Pastor’s web site. Please feel free to look around our pages. I hope you find the information here useful, please do get in touch with any questions that you may have.

Regards and blessings from all at Maidstone Street Pastors

We are honoured to be a new beneficiary of Involve. (December 2022)

Involve vision is ‘Healthy, connected people and communities’. We improve health, empowering people and communities to live well and tackling the root causes of ill health including isolation, loneliness, disadvantage and frailty.

We are a charity established in 1975 to develop volunteering and communities, we are now leaders in social prescribing and other innovative approaches to improve wellbeing in communities.

We are ambitious about the impact we can have on health, and seek parity of esteem between social and clinical interventions.

For more information about Involve please visit:
www.involvekent.org.uk

 

27th August 2022

It was great to be part of Ian and Steph’s wedding. Ian is one of our Street Pastors and is also our treasurer, Steph is one of Prayer Pastors. I was privileged to be one Ian’s Groomsmen. They had a fantastic day with many Street and Prayer Pastors in attendance. Blessings to you both.

May 2022: We are pleased to announce that once again Golding Homes have been able to help us with a very valued donation. It is only with donations like these that we can continue our work in Maidstone. Find out more about Golding Homes by visiting: https://www.goldinghomes.org.uk/ Thank you Golding Homes

 

COMMISSIONING 2022  –  What a great night we had on Saturday 12th March.

Ascension Trust CEO Bejoy Pal ‘commissioned’ some of our Street and Prayer Pastors.
As shown (L-R) below, Sue, Steph, Jacqui, Robert, Ros, Brian, Jane and Mark (all in uniform) are with Bejoy (light suit). Jim (second from right) has only just joined us as therefore wasn’t able to be commissioned yet – but we didn’t want to leave him out.  St. Luke’s Church kindly allowed us to use their church and facilities – what great facilities!
In particular Clive and Melanie Williams who led some brilliant worship songs, along with the ‘tea team’ on duty afterwards to serve refreshments.

The evening had a really lovely feel to it. Those being commissioned brought along family, friends plus church family/friends!

We were delighted that The Worshipful Mayor of Maidstone – Fay Gooch and her husband Peter could join us.
Madam Mayor gave a lovely message and heartfelt thanks to us all at Maidstone Street Pastors.
(humour – I have ‘my eye’ on Madam Mayor to join us in the future! We are blessed to have two ex-Mayors on our team already, Cllr Denise Joy and Cllr Derek Butler, so, look out Madam Mayor!).

Watch and listen to our version of Isle of Wight Street Pastors beautiful song. Please click below.

We are pleased to announce that Golding Homes have again, made a donation to our work.    Established in 2004 following the transfer of homes from Maidstone Borough Council, they have invested more than £170m in regenerating their homes and neighbourhoods. Their priority is to provide homes for their customers that are safe and secure and ensure their communities are places where people choose to live.

We are very grateful to OneMaidstone BID for their donation to our work. BID Manager Ilsa Butler said, “We feel that the Street Pastors provide an invaluable contribution to the safety and well being of the town centre and its users during the busy night time economy periods.  We also consider the Street Pastors to be friends and partners to both the Board and to the businesses that we represent”.

It is with great pleasure to say Thank You to CSIS for their generous donation to our work. Founded in 1890, CSIS, The Civil Service Insurance Society, is based in Maidstone town centre. CSIS has ‘Not for Profit’ status, and donates all profits to deserving charities within the Civil and Public Service through the CSIS Charity Fund.

For more details about CSIS and the Home, Motor and Travel products they sell, visit WWW.CSIS.CO.UK

 

Thank you to St. Faiths Church. I recently spoke there and they kindly made a generous donation to our work. Pictured below are Church Wardens Dale Nurden and Rose Henn-Macrae, along with Prayer Pastor Katy Rogers, myself Nigel Downes and Hazel Giles Street Pastor.

 

Our great thanks go to The Brook Trust Fund for their continued financial assistance to our work. Without grants and donations like these, we would not be able to continue our work.  Further information about The Brook Trust Fund can be found at: http://brooktrust.org/

YIPPEE! We returned to do some day-time patrols from Saturday 20th March 2021. Many thanks to Ian, Jane and Hazel all looking great in their new Street Pastor branded face masks. Mary was also observing with us.

As we emerge from lock-down, would you like to do something different in 2021?  See this short video below

Since Lockdown, some of our Street Pastors have been carrying out additional day time patrols at Maidstone Market. Miya’s Church leader asked her to share what it means to her. Please watch Miya’s video below (click the link). Thanks to Miya and those that have been helping out with extra duties – what a blessing 🙂

Andre Bent Memorial Service   We held a memorial service on 25th August 2020 for Andrew Bent who was murdered one year ago here in Maidstone. Andre from London, was at a Maidstone nightclub where a fight broke out, his murderer, also from London was sentenced to 25 years. Andre was unaware at the time that his girlfriend was expecting their daughter.

Pictured below: Top left; Maidstone Street Pastor Chairman – Revd. Arthur leading prayers, along with Val Jacobs – Trustee of The Urban Blue Bus.  Top right; Street Pastors and Urban Blue Bus volunteers place their flowers.  Bottom left; Street Pastor Hazel Giles places a message from Street Pastors – bottom right.

Watch a video of this service @ https://www.facebook.com/maidstonestreetpastors

Returning to patrols after Coronavirus lock-down.

We were able to return to patrols on Saturday 4th July, and were fortunate to have two teams out. Pictured below is one of the teams who as you can see from the ‘thumbs up’, were pleased to be back. Thankfully the night was not as problematic as we thought it may have been.

Also, we were blessed to have assistance from Maidstone Distillery who supplied us with 80% alcohol hand sanitiser!

   

Our great thanks go to these organisations for assisting in funding our work. Your help is much appreciated.

                     

      

In October 2018 we celebrated 10 Years of Maidstone Street Pastors. Maidstone was the first Street Pastor Initiative to be set up in Kent. Attending this great celebration was the Mayor of Maidstone David Naghi, Inspector Mark Hedges, Retired Bishop Graham Cray and Jackie Cray who were the Church leaders responsible for setting it up. We were privileged to have the High Sheriff of Kent – Jane Ashton join us along with Eustace Constance from Ascension Trust.

What a great day!