Most baby boomers remember the Beatles’ hit, “Strawberry Fields Forever.” The Salvation Army is using nostalgia for the song to spread the gospel and address poverty.
The original Strawberry Field was a children’s home in Liverpool, England, just around the corner from John Lennon’s childhood home. Strawberry Field is known for its red gates festooned with strawberry motifs, which are often thronged with tourists taking selfies and some adding to the graffiti on the gates’ stone pillars. The children’s home, closed in 2005, has been demolished. In its place is a new structure that contains a prayer space, a café and an exhibition about Lennon and the Beatles. The building also houses a training project to help young people with special needs find work.
Last year, Strawberry Field welcomed 120,000 paying visitors; this year the Salvation Army expects even more. International Beatles Week, which started last Thursday, will put it on the tourist trail that includes the nearby childhood homes of Paul McCartney and Lennon, local Beatles museums and other landmarks.
“The Salvation Army through its research discovered a surprising fact, and that was that every year 60,000 John Lennon fans and Beatles fans were bringing themselves uninvited to the red gates, and many came not knowing what Strawberry Field was,” mission director Kathy Versfeld told Religion News Service. “The Salvation Army realized there was the potential not just for a commercial operation here but an opportunity for engagement with those individuals who would not quickly come through the doors of a Salvation Army church or center.”
Versfeld and her team want to challenge people who visit the center: “Strawberry Fields Forever — but what does last forever?,” she said. “What does abundance look like, and what does it mean for us to open the gates and to do good?”
The doors are open seven days a week for tourists and local people alike. When the Versfeld arrived, the famous strawberry gates had been shut for years, but now, she said, “The gates are open for good.”
–Alan Goforth | Metro Voice