Local Mission

Birthday Project -- 2008 - 2009

Nightlight, Odyssey Complex

The work of the Presbyterian Church in Ireland’s Nightlight began officially in September 1995 as a development of what had originally been called The Night Ministry.  The outreach started in an area of South Belfast known as the Golden Mile.  This area had become the entertainment area of Belfast and at weekends several thousand people came into the Golden Mile to have a good time.  Nightlight’s purpose was to establish and develop a Christian outreach to these people - by simply being ‘salt and light’ and sharing God’s love in a real and relevant manner with people on the street.  The Nightlight mission statement ‘Proclaiming and Demonstrating the Kingdom of God through Word and Action’ really sums up the methodology behind the outreach.  Now, nearly thirteen years later, the work is even more relevant - with an estimated twenty thousand people coming into the Golden Mile every Friday and Saturday night and with two other entertainment areas developing in the Odyssey Complex in East Belfast and the Cathedral Quarter in North Belfast.

The work in the Odyssey Complex grew so quickly that Brian Simons was appointed as a full-time member of staff in September 2005.  Brian had been a volunteer with Nightlight since the start in 1995 and was an elder in Bloomfield Presbyterian Church.  Brian has built up a small team of volunteers who currently cover the Odyssey every Friday and Saturday night.  A small team is ideal at present but as the Odyssey expands and becomes an integral part of the Titanic Quarter, the needs of the outreach will also increase.  At present the team meet in a café in the complex but they do not have a place they can use as a base.  This means that they have nowhere to work from and, more importantly, they do not have anywhere to bring people back to.  The nearest Church premises are almost a mile away and are not a safe location in the early hours of the morning.  There are, however, premises in the complex available to rent but they are not cheap.  PW hopes to provide a significant contribution towards the rental of these premises.