Accelerating Progress
Transforming communities with the Love Your Neighbour Hub Accelerator
It’s been so inspiring to see how Love Your Neighbour Hubs across the country have been transforming their communities. Last year, we decided to dial things up a notch. With the launch of the Hub Accelerator, we’ve seen 16 Hubs from different denominations and areas of the UK dive deeper into supporting their local communities to drive national change.
What is the Hub Accelerator?
The Hub Accelerator is the most effective way for Hubs – no matter where they are – to upskill their services to better meet the needs of their community. Aside from funding, some of the biggest barriers to effective social engagement are resources and knowledge. The hope was that by working together and connecting, we could give churches the vision, expertise, and resources to be effective providers of social transformation.
Having the will to perform social outreach is great, but there are a lot of logistical questions that might come up. What specific problems are we trying to address? How are we going to address them? What does this look like in the day-to-day functioning of the church? Together with our Love Your Neighbour Hubs, we addressed these obstacles in hopes that clarity and expertise could empower Hubs to have a greater positive impact in their community.
Over the course of 7 months, Hubs were trained in Mission, Strategy, and Operations. With our industry experts, Hubs developed 5-year plans to help them track their growth and monitor how their new strategies are providing help to those who need it most.
How’s it going?
Last year, the Hub Accelerator was run as a pilot scheme. We were learning together and from each other. It was an ambitious project, made possible by churches being as open to learning and developing as they are to their communities.
In Newcastle, Andrew Gallagher and the team at Hillsong UK have been able to successfully outline what problems they hope to address and how to do it. Since joining the Hub Accelerator, he told us:
"The Hub Accelerator has been really good for us to narrow down and see exactly what need we want to meet, find a good target group, and find out how we can better serve them long-term instead of just meeting their short-term needs."
This clear vision was echoed by Audacious, Manchester. Laura Howard and the team commented on the effectiveness of being able to identify what they wanted to achieve and how to measure that impact on the community – something that they wouldn’t have been able to do before. Through the connections and national sense of unity, they were able to provide so much more to those who need it.
Seeing that Hubs have felt supported and better equipped to both outline their vision and pursue it is more than we could’ve hoped. This was an ambitious project, and it’s seen some incredible results. We’ve started with 16 Hubs across the UK, and we’re looking forward to onboarding more Hubs this year.
Love Your Neighbour Showcase
The Rt Hon Sir Stephen Timms MP held a reception on behalf of Love Your Neighbour at the House of Commons. During the event, Tom Jackson, CEO of Love Your Neighbour, shared the vision of a society transformed through the unity of churches, and we had updates from Gas Street Church, Church Crawley, SOUL Church and Trent Vineyard on the impact of their Love Your Neighbour partnership in their local communities.
Love Your Neighbour Hubs facilitate community-based support through wrap-around care, such as mental health groups, drop-in cafes, and supportive relationships. Find out more about our Hubs below.