Ministries

Night Clubs and Street Chaplains – a Late Night City Ministry Making a Difference

It’s 3.00am and Black Betty’s nightclub is winding down. People around and inside are drunk and noisy. Street chaplains walking past notice a girl crying. One of the chaplains, a middle aged mum in her own right goes up to the girl, gives her a hug and some tissues. They spend time together and the girl’s story tumbles out between her sobbing. It’s the old story retold of coming in earlier with her boyfriend, but now he has left her and gone to the next club with his buddies and another girl!

The chaplains spend time with the girl until she has poured it all out and they can give her some wisdom about life. It’s another incident in a busy night. Somewhere else in the city the girl’s parents will be grateful a chaplain was beside her daughter that night.

This is but one incident in a busy night for the chaplains. By 4.00am the city is slowing down, so they drop into the city’s hospital and spend time sharing the pain and offering support to those in the waiting room. The Triage nurse expresses his gratitude for them being there again.

There are currently 20 trained Street Chaplains in a voluntary ministry working on Friday and Saturday nights in Perth’s premier nightclub scene and usually do a roster twice a month. They meet regularly every six weeks, share their stories with one another and work out how to improve the ministry. Perth’s population is a little over a million and some 40,000 people come to the night life precinct of a weekend.

Training is taken seriously with a full year of training available at a city Bible College to degree level. Training includes Christian conflict management, pastoral care and team roles as well as evangelism. Police and other Service Providers are so supportive of the ministry. A website captures something of the vision of this valuable project http://urbanmissionwa.com.

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