bless.

bless (The Bless network) is a UK registered charity founded by Gerard and Chrissie Kelly. Having worked with Youth for Christ both in the UK and in France (Jeunesse pour Christ), Gerard and Chrissie began taking teams of young people to France and Croatia in 1995. Their vision was to see young people more widely exposed to the missional needs of mainland Europe, and to use short-term missional experience as a dynamic tool in discipleship and personal growth. The phrase ‘take something with you; bring something back’ captured the ethos of these early trips. Participants were encouraged to bring blessing to the communities they visited but also to ask God, through their visit, to change them, so that they also brought blessing back with them. Over the years many hundreds of people have entered into this experience, moving into a deeper understanding of God’s heart for Europe and a deeper embracing of God’s mission for their own lives.

With full charity registration in 2004 the name ‘bless’ was adopted.

Gerard and Chrissie have recently spent four years based in Amsterdam, and a steady stream of young people from the Netherlands now participate in bless programmes, joining those from the UK and France and the occasional long-distance traveller from the USA and Australia. With placements in France (Lisieux and Perpignan), Croatia (Slavonski Brod) and Spain (Madrid), bless works alongside local churches in missional settings: engaging with the local community hand-in-hand with the local church. In 2010 we will send our first team to Bosnia (Banja Luka) and we are exploring links with Germany.

We retain an office base in the UK at Chawn Hill Church in Stourbridge and are developing a centre for missional formation in France, not far from Lisieux.

The 10-strong bless team is divided between the UK and France, and all our team members are volunteers, serving alongside other paid work or raising personal mission support. We are supported by individuals and churches in France, the Netherlands and the USA. Our work is overseen by a Board of Trustees.

We see ourselves as a network of people engaging in God’s mission in Europe. For some of us that engagement means front-line commitment, for others it means support and prayer. For all of us it means allowing the priorities of God’s mission to shape our personal choices. At the heart of our work is a generation of young Europeans searching for meaning in confusing and challenging times. The more these young people learn, through missional engagement, to live for others, the brighter the future of our continent will be.