If you’ve joined us at Jubilee more recently you may not have heard about LoveDerby. We love gathering centrally on Sundays but four times a year instead of gathering we scatter throughout our city. The great commission is all about going out and making disciples and this is one of the ways we seek to do that as a church community. Our next LoveDerby Sunday is on Sunday 9th June and there are various projects taking place. This morning we’re going to hear from the project leaders and then gather in groups to pray for each project.

Litter Pick & Pray – Chaddesden – Steve
If you were here a few weeks ago you’ll have heard me share about it being such a privilege to lead our Litter Pick & Pray project. This project seeks to bless our communities by spending time tidying up, clearing away litter and rubbish which has accumulated. We have some great opportunities to speak to those who we pass in the street. We also carry invite cards with us, so that we can invite people we meet along to Jubilee.

Quite often we’re joined by some of the local councilors from the local area which is fantastic. This time, we’ll be collecting litter around Breadsall Hilltop, which is actually very close to where my family and I live. So, we’ll meet once again at the Coniston Crescent Community Centre and then walk down to where we’ll start the litter pick. This is a great opportunity for all ages to do something positive in our community.

Smile – Family Fun – Tim Hardman
So Jubilee has been running a respite facility for children & young people with additional needs since 2009! The children may have physical or learning needs or a mixture of both. We provide a safe and fun environment, that isn’t like school. We have great times together and there are lots of opportunities to get to know these fantastic people and their families.

More recently we’ve been running Smile as part of LoveDerby, providing a morning where parents and carers can also stay and have a chat over coffee with other parents and some of our team.

This time we’ll be meeting once again at the Coronation Pub in Alvaston, we’ll be having a visit from Woodies Wings, who are a local charity who care for rescued birds. They’ll be bringing some of their birds along for the children & young people to meet.

Gardening Projects – Chaddesden & Spondon
We’ve got not one but two gardening projects this time around and we’re really looking forward to being able to go and serve people, directly in their homes. We’ve got two projects as we said, one in Chaddesden and the other In Spondon.

You may think at this time of year that your garden needs some work but trust me, we’ve worked on some gardens in the past where residents really need some help to get on top of things! So, it’s a really great opportunity to get our hands dirty, we’ll have some work to do. If you’ve got some tools, you can bring particularly power battery powered tools, then we’d love to see you there.

It’s a great opportunity to do something really practical which is a real witness and demonstration of the love of God for someone else.

We’ve spoken to residents in the past and it’s so personal and impactful for them. When we did this a little while ago, the lady who lived there had so many questions about why we were there and why we wanted to help, giving up some of our own time. It’s a fantastic opportunity to share the reasons we do that with them.

So please do sign up, you’re probably going to need to be more than mildly energetic and enthusiastic for these projects because we’ll be tackling some extreme gardening!

To find out more and register for your project visit: lovederby.org