New pastoral assistants will be helping to care for Hackney residents by running a Death Café to talk about end-of-life issues as well as other community projects supporting the vulnerable, elderly and homeless.

Pastoral care in Hackney was given a boost when The Bishop of Stepney, The Rt Rev Dr Joanna Woolway Grenfell commissioned five pastoral assistants at St Michael and All Angels Stoke Newington Common Church

The Bishop of Stepney said: "Pastoral assistants fulfil a vital gospel ministry. Their work is patient and often unseen, as they build bridges between church and community, and between people in many different life situations.

"I pray that our new pastoral assistants will be the hands and feet of Jesus in the world to the people of Hackney."

The assistants will work in five churches across Hackney. These include St Paul West Hackney, St Peter De Beauvoir Town, St Michael and All Angels Stoke Newington Common Church, St John the Evangelist at Brownswood Park and St Mark in Dalston.

Their ministries will include running a Death Café to talk about end-of-life issues, visiting the sick as well as running a Soup Garden Project producing food for the church soup kitchen.

The pastoral assistants will also be coordinating the provision of food bank donations; developing a Music Medicine Project for the elderly, volunteering with St Joseph Hospice’s compassionate neighbour scheme and volunteering with North London Action for the Homeless.

The new Pastoral Assistants will join twenty-three existing Pastoral Assistants serving their communities and their churches across Hackney, Tower Hamlets and Islington.