Britain's Biggest Street Party

Last week the Queen celebrated her 96th birthday. Seemingly immortal, she is heading fast to perhaps the biggest party of her life, as she becomes the first British monarch to celebrate a Platinum Jubilee after 70 years of service.

A national initiative is launched to form Britain’s biggest ever street party over the bank holiday weekend. Local communities, up and down the nation, are asked to connect together and to serve their neighbourhoods, particularly after national lockdown was such a disconnected time.

One thing lockdown showed us was the loneliness in our cities. It proved that living disconnected lives comes at a cost.

Lockdown also showed us the potential released when communities do come together. In Nether Edge, one church pastor took initiative, sent cards to his immediate neighbours asking if they needed food, or wanted to give it. So much was donated that they first piled it into their downstairs toilet, and eventually stored it and ran a mini-foodbank from their parked car on the driveway. That’s the power of one person’s initiative, a great example of the community coming together, community serving community.

Lockdown showed us that the world needs each other. We were already a very disconnected society obsessed with convenience, sitting as individuals in cafes ordering our own coffee using contactless, not mixing with the person next to us. We live digitally connected but not in community. How many people do you actually know well, how well known are you to others?

Christian churches have met and learned about sharing life with others for hundreds of years in South Yorkshire. Christians gather in buildings and each other’s homes across this city, week after week, in ordinary times, or to celebrate or mourn, as people come together to share life-on-life serve each other. One of the greatest expressions of Christianity is to be community, to be family together.

If you are lonely after lockdown and longing for connection, finding a local church is a great way to connect with people, whoever you are, whatever stage or background.  

My church will take up the Jubilee challenge, we’ll be hosting a street party in the Sharrowvale community, looking to get to know people in our neighbourhood. Let’s get out on the streets for the June Jubilee bank holiday. May this season remind us of the power of coming together, and how much we need our neighbours.