Green Pastures - N. Ireland

[chris138]

Wrightbus is one of the largest expanding companies in N. Ireland right now, building buses and coaches for markets as far as Asia. About 10 years ago, the owners of Wrights built Green Pastures church beside their factory in a village on the outskirts of Ballymena. Not only are Wrights well know for not employing members of the catholic religion, but every lamp post leading to and around the factory have loyalist flags flying with pride.

Green Pastures is expanding, they are currently trying to get planning permission for a 97 acre village in the Ballee area of Ballymena. This is called Project Nehemiah taken from the New Testament.

For the uninitiated, the book of Nehemiah in the Old Testament talks about a governor called Nehemiah going to Jerusalem to rebuild the walls of the city. When he gets there he finds that the city has largely fallen to wrong-doing (what the Bible calls “sin”). Nehemiah rebuilds the walls and restores obedience to the Law of Moses to the city (essentially restoring morality), all whilst fighting off God’s enemies who are trying to stop this work. What’s the interpretation here? Is Ballymena, or wider society in Ballymena falling to some sin from which it needs rescuing? Are opponents to this plan the enemies of God as in the book of Nehemiah, trying to stop the work? In the final sections of the book, Nehemiah goes back to the city some time later only to find that it has fallen back into sin – so I’m sure the Green Pastures project hopes for the metaphor to end sometime before that!

http://www.andymilligan.org.uk/2013/06/ ... community/

Anyway, I know the area well. It's a bitter place. Building a village beside an area like Ballee, or anywhere around Ballymena will cause mayhem, because it's rife with drugs and crime. I can see a lot of trouble over this.

I've only been back in the country a short while, so my knowledge is limited but I'm going to try and keep this thread updated with news and the like. I have to say I'm against any type of church or chapel ( http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/ ... 34221.html ). I grew up on that street!

Edited to add - Two weekends ago GP members went around every house in the Ballee area, I'm not sure about the numbers in that area but easily a few hundred houses, and gave a gift of one loaf of bread and a pint of milk.

there's a few more links below about GP.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-N1EVNsfxqA

http://www.limerickreformed.com/compone ... -ballymena

And the Anti GP facebook page:

https://www.facebook.com/pages/The-REAL ... 6362971948