Here at Redcar Baptist Church we believe that God is bursting with love for the people of this town, and we see it as our role to demonstrate that.

Large parts of Redcar have been under-resourced and under-served for many years. As a result, the story we tell about ourselves and hear in the media about our town can be one of lack.

There’s a famous passage in the Bible, and you’ve probably heard quoted in a movie or on TV or something. It’s from Psalm 23 and it starts like this:

“The Lord is my Shepherd, I lack nothing, He makes me lie down in green pastures. He leads me beside quiet waters, He restores my soul.”

As people of faith, it’s a hard passage to look at when viewed through the lens of the struggles we see in our town. We have one of the fastest-aging populations in the UK because of the lack of opportunity. We have one of the highest male suicide rates - due in part to a lack of provision around mental health. On top of that, we have high youth crime, and that's due in part to a lack of youth groups. And of course there are people struggling to pay their food bills. The list kind of goes on….

And so it makes that passage of the Bible a hard one to read.

But then we decided we’d try and flip the script. To look at the story of this town through the lens of that Psalm. What would happen if we believed that our town wasn't defined by lack, but had already been gifted the means of our own transformation?

We see that God has given us those means through the talents and generosity of the people of this place and we see it as our mission to spot them, nurture them and empower them to make a difference in this place.

Through this approach, we’re committing ourselves to partner with you to change the story of this town so that it better resembles that place of restoration and beauty that we read about in the Psalm. We’d love you to join in - and we hope you enjoy reading about what's going on!