In 2020 the world was thrown into an unprecedented crisis when COVID changed the way we live and work almost overnight. For us as Church Army, things began to move quickly as our key workers rushed to the frontline to support the physical, emotional and spiritual needs of communities and individuals across the UK and Ireland. At that time, we moved our quarterly Catalyst magazine to every other month to make sure that you were getting the most recent updates about our work as soon as possible. We also brought our Prayer Diary into the magazine to help keep everything together.

Although living with the reality of Coronavirus still remains part of our lives, by God’s grace we are starting to see some normality returning to the way we reach out to people and we will be sending out Catalyst  quarterly once more. It will be longer, include some exciting new features and will continue to show you where we are at work – bringing hope to the streets. We will be starting with a special edition to celebrate 2022 as Church Army’s 140th anniversary.

Prayer Diary too will be changing. After this edition it will once again be a separate booklet for you to use during your own private prayer time or in your church group or community. We’ve listened to all your feedback on how you use our magazines and publications and we are hoping to bring you some fresh new ways to read about our work and pray for our evangelists and wider community who are daily seeking to show Jesus’ love through words and actions.

Thank you for your support, particularly throughout the last two years of the pandemic and constant change. Your prayers and financial generosity have helped in so many ways: keeping people off the streets, supporting young people through mental-health crises and delivering food parcels to families in low-income households, to name just a few, and perhaps most excitingly, many people being introduced to Jesus for the very first time.

As you read through the pages of this final, shorter edition of Catalyst, I hope you’ll be uplifted and inspired by the many ways in which God is working powerfully through the hands of faithful, ordinary Christians everywhere.

God Bless,

Chris Hardy, Publications Officer