About Us

As noted on our website's home page, our aim is to provide hope, day-shelter, food, drinks, clothes and friendship to our wider community here in Gloucester – and especially those who find themselves homeless or marginalised.

To achieve this, we have developed a strategy that can be summed up in just three words:

How we got here: The History of Gloucester City Mission

What would you do if you found someone sleeping rough in the car park of a church, surrounded by empty bottles? Would you help them or tell them to move on? How would you react if you then discovered that person was the speaker?

This is just one of the ways Mike Curtis, the founder of Gloucester City Mission, alerted people to the plight of the homeless in the city, with the aim of bringing Christ to the marginalised and serving them in practical ways.

The first City Mission was started in Glasgow during the 1820s by David Naismith, who believed that Christians needed to visibly share their faith through deeds as well as words. Today, the British Association of City Missions is a network of more than twenty such interdenominational missions across the UK and Ireland, helping some of the neediest people in our cities.

Mike began Gloucester City Mission in August 2003. However, his connection with street people went back much earlier, when he worked as a printer for Zurich Insurance.

“I was doing a lot of overtime and when people came up to me in the street begging I would get cross and tell them to get off their backsides and try to do a day’s work like I had to do!”

“One day God challenged me about my attitude, and said ‘Why were you rude to these people?’ Suddenly I saw them from God’s perspective.

I realised that the beggars on the street were people who were so hurt and damaged there was no way they could do a day’s work. It’s like God took out my heart of stone towards them and gave me a heart of flesh, like he promised in Ezekiel 36:26.”

Mike began Gloucester City Mission in August 2003. However, his connection with street people went back much earlier, when he worked as a printer for Zurich Insurance.

The homeless need help

The average life expectancy on the street is 42 years. Government figures show that they have higher than average risk of suffering from infections such as TB, hepatitis, and septicaemia, poor diet and nutrition, stress, depression, and musculo-skeletal disorders. Around half of single people on the street have a combination of mental and physical health problems.

All kinds of people live on the street, and a large number have suffered emotional, sexual or physical abuse and according to Mike, 80 per cent of people on the street are there through relationship breakdown. One teenager’s parents fought over who wouldn’t have him when they divorced; they each had new partners and no room for him in their lives. There are also professors, lawyers, engineers and businessmen who have turned to alcohol or drugs or suffered a nervous breakdown, often after divorce or family tragedy.

The challenges that GCM helps to address certainly haven't got any smaller as the years have passed, and the charity's work is needed more than ever nowadays, so thank you for visiting our website.

Make a Donation

Meet the Gloucester City Mission Team!

Louise MacKenzie

General Manager

louise@gloscitymission.org.uk

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