A solitary ambulance siren wailed above the roar of traffic, the bangs of breaking glass and the manic blast of dance music from pub and club doorways.

By a bus shelter, a man in his early thirties, his unshaven face as tired as his torn leather jacket, swayed alarmingly by the pavement’s edge. He said his name was Phil and although showing a lucid grasp of the major religions of the world, he appeared emotionally frail. “Can you pray for me?” he pleaded. The man alongside him duly requested the Lord “to help make Phil a happier and more settled person”.

Close by, a dog foraged among the remains of Saturday night in the naval garrison and university city of Plymouth. The swaying drunk was visibly moved by the prayers. The man doing the praying wore a blue cap and uniform and carried a walkie-talkie. He was on patrol, as part of a rapidly growing and increasingly successful force for calm in urban Britain.

Stu Clarke is not a police officer — nor would he ever wish to be. A Baptist minister in Plymouth for the past nine years, he leads a 48-strong team of street pastors in the city’s North Hill and Mutley areas. In the heart of the university quarter, the number of bars, clubs and fast-food outlets have mushroomed here in the past 20 years.

Pioneered in London in 2003 by the Rev Les Isaac, director of the religious training provider, the Ascension Trust, Street Pastors is the Christian Church’s multi-denominational response to a culture of alcohol and violence that blights night-time economies around Britain.

Plymouth Street Pastors is one of the newest of a national network of 80 groups. Operational since May 23, this was its 20th patrol. “This is the first week of the university term,” Clarke said. “And you have all these students out there, trying to drink the town dry.”

Street Pastors is not for dilettante do-gooders. Volunteers need to demonstrate a commitment to the Church and to produce strong references and be ready to undergo criminal record checks. Aspiring Street Pastors must also make a one-off payment of £300 to cover the cost of uniform, insurance and intensive training in topics that include first aid, mentoring, street awareness and drug and alcohol misuse.

“Les Isaac came down to Plymouth and spent the morning with local police,” Clarke said. “By the afternoon, we had an inspector saying, ‘Guys, I’d like Street Pastors out there tonight please.’ Something happened to me and a lot of the others. We knew this was God’s guidance for us. We needed to do this.

“We had a commissioning service for our 48 trained street pastors. That night, all of us went out on patrol. The following night, we started our patrols of two teams at a time — and we’ve been out every Saturday night since.”

Plymouth Street Pastors gather at Mutley Baptist Church, close to the main “strip” of bars and clubs. As well as the walkie-talkies and the bottled water for sobering up drunk people, street pastors carry basic first-aid kits, foil “space blankets” for warming up the seriously hypothermic — and flip-flops.

“Girls come out of clubs late at night, carrying shoes with these huge stiletto heels,” Clarke explains. “They can’t walk in them any more — and they try to walk home in bare feet among broken glass. We bought flip-flops of all sizes and colours — and it makes quite an impact when we kneel down and put them on. Off they go — and we know they’re safe and they know they’re safe.”

The church room fills with other volunteers, ready with prayers for the night’s work ahead. “We call them prayer pastors — and we have 149 of them. Around 30 of them commit themselves on a rota basis to come in and pray with us until our shifts end at four in the morning. Out on patrol, we telephone in with each “encounter” and we ask for an immediate prayer.

“One night, we had to yank one guy out of the path of a bus because he wanted to jump under it. So while he’s being hauled back and our people are talking with him, one of us dropped back and asked for a prayer from the team back here. We get people crashed out on the pavement. They’re throwing up all over the place. So again, we need divine help. It requires true faith, but it’s faith at the most basic level.

“Street Pastors are totally dependent on being prayed for — both for our safety and for our wisdom. It’s very much a case of ‘Lord, they need you now’.”

As well as establishing a Christian presence on the streets and to offer “non-judgmental pastoral support”that even extends to waiting with vulnerable youngsters by taxi ranks, the organisation seeks to reduce a fear of crime that is widespread across the city.

“Figures show that fear of crime is actually 70 per cent higher than the actual crime rate. It far outweighs the reality of the situation,” Clarke says.

“Our whole role is to ask, ‘Are you OK?’ We’ll let them make the approaches if they want to talk about faith.”

The Plymouth Pastors range from Mark, a 34-year-old engineer, to Philip, a retired 74-year-old. Ahead of the first two-hour patrol, from ten until midnight, the entire group engages in intense prayer. One of the women pleads for the teams “to be given the words to speak and the compassion to reach out”. Another prays “for fledgeling students away from home for the first time”.

Outside, the pastors are greeted warmly by door staff, cab drivers, burger sellers and by the young people themselves. “That Jesus . . . He’s a legend,” shouts a male student in a flurry of “high-fives”.

Since May 2008 Plymouth Street Pastors have held 1,923 conversations, prayed with 138 people, removed 1,398 bottles and glasses from the streets and given away 39 pairs of flip-flops.

“We’re here for the long term,” says Clarke. “And we will be very necessary.”

www.streetpastors.co.uk