|PIC1|2008 may be at an end, but for the thousands of churches that took part in the yearlong church movement Hope08, this year was just the beginning.

The brainchild of Mike Pilavachi, Andy Hawthorne and Roy Crowne, Hope08 has inspired thousands of churches to go out and engage in their communities in the name of Jesus Christ.

From litter picking, to gardening, to graffiti cleaning, to befriending the marginalised, Christians committed whatever time they could to fulfilling the Hope08 goal of Christians donating one million hours of kindness to the UK.

But what started out as a hope-bringing act of service to the community has proven to be just as beneficial to the church.

“Hope08 has been a catalyst and a kind of banner,” says Katie Cole, an administrator with Southampton Christian Network. “Sometimes people are suspicious of buying into something which is by a particular church or one particular strand of churches so it was really helpful to be able to label something ‘Hope08’. It really worked in getting people to own things.”

As part of Hope08, the network trained Christians in sharing the Good News of Christ with their friends and family, co-organised citywide prayer weeks, and took part in hands on community action. On Easter Sunday, 27 different churches from across Southampton came together to release eye-catching red balloons with messages and prayers of hope attached to them.

“That was the most churches I had seen buy into something,” she recalls. “The church is often known for what it is against but we wanted to say we are for hope and for this city. It was such a positive statement.”

In another show of unity, several churches came together to reinvigorate one socially deprived estate by mending fences, doing some gardening and clearing away rubbish. Seven people from the estate became Christians.

The year has prepared the ground for greater things, Katie believes.

“I think if I went up to someone in Southampton and said do you know what Hope08 is, I don’t think they would have heard of it.

“At the start of the year I wanted the profile to be out there but I think this year for Southampton has been more about raising the profile within the community.

“It’s got more Christians thinking and talking about working together and I think we might find that 2009 is the time when it’s taken out on the streets a bit more.”

Just one of the fruits of Hope08 for Southampton is the launch of Street Pastors early next year. Now Katie expects even more from 2009 as the network looks to build on the work that was done over the last year.

“The foundations built in the city prayer meetings have all been really good in 2008 and I think we will want to build on that in 2009,” she says.

“This year we got church leaders working together more than they have done before but we want to see that filter down to the congregations themselves.

“We’ve got church leaders talking about praying together and doing mission together but we want to go beyond chatting about it and actually doing it and I’m hopeful that 2009 will give us more of an opportunity to do that.”

For Eunice Atwood, a deacon at Brunswick Methodist Church in Newcastle, Hope08 was a similar experience.

“It’s been fantastic to see Christians from different churches coming together,” she said. “I think there is a new sense of energy and certainly a new sense of cohesion between churches. The commitment to one another is just beautiful to see.”

Eunice’s church is just one of many in the city involved in the Newcastle launch of Street Pastors earlier in the month. Another project spurred on by the energy of Hope08 was the Healing on the Streets prayer initiative, which sees church volunteers regularly head out into the city centre with a handful of chairs to await people in need of healing and prayer. Eunice says they have already prayed for hundreds of people from all walks of life, including soldiers, drug addicts and alcoholics, and the young as well as old.

“People say they felt healed and an awareness of God that they hadn’t experienced in their life. They are very spiritually thirsty and very much in need. The way people have just come and sat down has blown us away. Nobody expected people to engage quite as fully as they have,” she says.

“And we feel it’s an example of God being at work and that sense of God blessing us as Christians when we get out of our churches and work together.”

Eunice also takes pride in the sense of unity that Hope08 has fostered among the churches.

“Walls are completely breaking down in the north east. There is a real sense that God is at work and that Hope08 was not an accident.”

In Newcastle at least, the church is definitely not in demise.

“No, not here,” she says resolutely. “It’s very much alive and kicking.”