For over a month, the board outside of Chorlton Central church has displayed a picture of George Floyd.

Along with a quote from Martin Luther King Jr. and the phrase ‘take a knee: and may God’s kingdom come’, the board has been a critical reminder for local residents of the racism and inequality still encountered around the world.

However, on Friday evening (August 14), a neighbour near the church reached Reverend Mike Walsh to tell him the photo had been defaced with blue spray paint.

“They messaged me to tell me they’d seen the person who did it,” Mike told the M.E.N.

“They went out to challenge them and got a mouthful of abuse before the guy ran off.”

Refusing to let the act of vandalism deviate from the initial reasoning for the sign, the church congregation decided to work out what they could do in response.

“We’ve actually been talking recently about how the church sometimes struggles to respond creatively and we have a bit of a reputation for saying what people expect us to say,” the Rev’d said.

“We thought about how to turn things around and came up with a message saying how the vandalism was sad but we would be praying for the person who did it.

“They obviously have a lot of anger that has come from somewhere and we wanted to try and help them find peace about that.”

An image of the defaced picture of George Floyd, alongside the new messaging, was posted on the church’s social media over the weekend and amassed an ‘overwhelming response’.

After the service on Sunday, members of the church discussed further what else could be done to highlight what had occured.

“We decided we wanted to do something a bit bolder and visible to those passing by,” Mike, who has been Reverend at the Chorlton church for six years, sted further.

“We’ve got a huge curving wall outside of the church that’s usually plain red and used to hang banners up.

“We thought it’d make a big statement if we painted over it to say ‘Black Lives Matter’.”

Mike, together with another member of the church, spent three hours on Sunday evening painting the wall black and a further three hours on Monday morning writing the text on the wall.

“I deliberately sat outside the church once it was finished to talk to people about it,” he added.“There were lots of people taking photos as they walked past.“We put an image of the wall up on our Facebook page and we have been inundated with such a positive response.”

Since posting it online, the image of the updated wall has gained more than 1,300 likes and counting.“It would have been easy for us to clean the graffiti off and say no more about it,” he added.“But we felt that it was important to make an issue out of it and gain more publicity about the issue at hand.“We decided we wouldn’t clean the graffiti off for a while and we’re not sure how long we will keep the wall as it is.“We suspect sadly it will itself get vandalised at some point and if it does, we will decide whether to repair it or think of something even bigger and bolder.

“Chorlton is a great place and it’s a lovely church.

“We always try to come together as a community and we will continue to do so.

“We hope it continues the debate – that is our intention.”