Young people and Church: Trends and obstacles to be overcome

CHCH – what’s missing? …UR!

As I write I am having one of those wonderful moments of serendipity! I am preparing this session whilst working on a weekend church retreat looking at how to do church! My role is to work with 22 young people on how they see church and to enable them to feed their thinking into the process of exploring the future role of the church. What a progressive church (Witham URC), I am so encouraged that these adults have realised that their ‘old people’ dreams need to be tempered by the visions of young people (see Acts 2:17)!

The young people are great and they are engaging with the task with integrity, creativity and great gusto! However, it takes two to tango! I am thrilled to say that I think the adults are listening too! Participation is a messy business… but I believe it is crucial that we engage with each other; I believe that a key element of theocracy (the rule of God) is authentic inclusion – which can be a real challenge!

“…Established institutions are not good at coping with this new approach to common life and decision making. It appears to be chaotic, time consuming and open to abuse. Those who are used to exercising power as if it were their natural right become frustrated when the group process allows even the most reticent participants a chance to contribute. The goal, however, is not efficiency but inclusion...”

The Prodigal Project - Journey into the emerging church, Mike Riddell, Mark Pierson and Cathy Kirkpatrick (p.26&27).

Reflect on the quote please; is it true in your experience of church? Are you happy to allow the status quo of minority control to continue if you are in a church that functions like that? What will you do to listen to the ‘small voices’ that are left out of the debate? Is it possible that God might be speaking clearly through those small voices?

I am not interested in this session being a gripe about church! God loved the church enough to give His Son for it, so who am I to be critical of what He loves! However, I want to ensure that this session enables us to be critically aware of how those who are left out of church currently might be included in the future. I even hope that those who are excluded might play an increased role in building the place that Jesus said would not have the gates of hell prevail against it (Matt 16: 18)!

I wonder if you have ever thought what He meant by this? The gates of Hell won’t prevail against it? My view is that the early disciples would have understood this comment in terms of the gates of the city being the place where decisions were made and where wisdom was dispensed by the elders. That was their tradition and experience. Therefore, I suspect the verse means that the ‘planning and strategies of hell will not overcome what God will do through His church’. Doesn’t that give you hope and encouragement! We may get it wrong often but there is a good shepherd who will guide and redeem our mistakes and an empowering Spirit who will transform our weakness into the strength of God! Hallelujah!

William Temple said, ‘The church is the only co-operative society in the world that exists for the benefit of its non-members’! Even if you don’t agree with the sentiment entirely (not sure that I do), what a radical perspective on organisation existence! So as you move through this session I hope and pray that you will be challenged and encouraged to see how we might be the body of Christ in ways that flesh out God’s

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great and continuing love for the world, especially to those who are too often left out.

Shalom - Dave Wiles (CEO Frontier Youth Trust)In the beginning…An introduction to this theme.

Journeying WITH young people

I have recently been delivered! At last I hear some of you say! The truth is that I have been delivered of a thirty five year obsession with trying to get the young people that I work amongst (many deemed to be ‘at risk’ and certainly ‘pre-Christian’) to join a church! I now feel confident that my role is much simpler! I am to remain faithful to the good news of Jesus and seek to ensure that young people come into safe, authentic faith based Christian relationships that will help them in their discipleship journey.

My moment of ‘delivery’ came when I realised that the gospels were written AFTER the epistles! I don’t claim a high degree of theological literacy, but it seemed to my simplistic view of the bible that someone at sometime in the days of the early church realised that the epistles that were circulating could perhaps do with grounding in the basics that sparked the faith in the first place. Is it possible that the gospels were an ‘offensive’ in the face of concern that the institutions that were evolving around Christianity were becoming rather obsessed with rules and form? I think it is significant that the church is only mentioned once in the gospel accounts (the gates of hell shall not prevail against it - Matt 16: 18) and that what is stressed in the gospels is Kingdom and the importance of relationships (‘where two or three are gathered in my name’).

REFLECTION: If this idea ‘holds water’ what does it suggest to you in terms of what church might be?

Labels

I was at an ecumenical event the other day when a young person asked me which ‘abomination’ I was a member of! I guessed that he meant denomination, but on reflection I did wonder if ‘abomination’ might not be more accurate! If I have to wear a Christian ‘badge’ I would go for ‘post Christian with a heavy leaning to evangelical, liberationist, and charismatic mysticism’! I use ‘post Christian’ as it generally leads to the question – ‘what do you mean by that’, which in turn develops into a dialogue about what kind of Christian I am not as well as what kind of Christian I actually am!

I want to reflect on how youth workers relate to young people in terms of the spiritual journey that both youth workers and young people may be engaged upon. The focus is about an aspect of youth work that might best be described as ‘being alongside young people’ and which deliberately seeks to contradict the notion that youth work is something that adults ‘do to’ young people. I want to suggest that the development of spirituality and faith is, or can be, a dynamic relationship taking place between the youth worker and young people - placing spiritual and faith development as an interactive process between young person and adult youth worker seeing young people as ‘human being’ rather than ‘human becoming’!

The Message

Liberation theologians argue that the ‘message’ of Christianity is critical and that the ‘models’ of being a Christian are far less important. The danger with much Christian activity is that we spend time and energy propagating the ‘models’ of Christianity that we have developed instead of remaining faithful to the sharing of the ‘message’. There are a host of subliminal and hidden conditions that are conveyed through innuendo and subtle approval/disapproval that are conveyed to young people as to what Christianity is and how it should be practised by many involved in youth work.

I have often used a role play exercise (Early Church role play on “Mission and Young People at Risk”

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(2002) training CD-ROM, Frontier Youth Trust, available on 0121 687 3505 or www.fyt.org.uk) with youth workers and church leaders to explore this phenomenon. The role play involves groups of people exploring scriptures to identify the role and development of a number of early churches (Antioch, Jerusalem, Rome etc). The groups explore significant events in the development of those churches, key individuals in their story and the values, theology and beliefs that are core to their identity. After this process the groups are asked to role play the early church that they have studied and they are then asked to visit each other in role to share something of their history and traditions; a story that is significant in their community and also to exchange a gift. At times the results have been both profound and extremely funny and have illustrated well the depth of discord and dissonance between evolving ‘models’ of church for the early church. For example, in one group that I worked with the Corinthians took a bacon sandwich as their gift to the church at Jerusalem! Hardly Kosher! One of the interesting outcomes to the exercise has been the obvious tensions and potential divisions that have come to the surface in the role play as groups have engaged in dialogue and explored their core beliefs in role. Some of the key learning from the exercise is that:

The message of the gospel impacted cultures in the early church in very differing ways, the context and culture in which the message was released is a key factor in how the model of church evolves.

The role play brings to the surface differences and disagreements that were very real for the early church and often became a source of tension and division. Looked at from a third person perspective ensuing schisms could have been avoided if the concept of ‘win – win’ was embraced and differing groups realised that they each had valid perspectives.

The early church groups each had special and precious traditions, experiences and events that shaped who they were and these were held on to as formative characteristics which whilst of great significance to the group were not common experience or easily understood by others.

The parallels to our own contemporary experience of church are always clear to those engaging in the exercise and the depth of discussion regarding the impact that this must have on those outside the church, particularly young people is always salutary. Liberationists would argue that our fidelity should always be to the ‘message’ of Christianity and not to the ‘models’ that have evolved around it.

ACTION: This all opens up the discussion, “well - what is the message”? Perhaps you would like to stop reading for a while and explore your own understanding of ‘the message’

Being alongside young people in their journey of faith

I would suggest that an important element of our work with young people outside of church is to form safe authentic relationships that engage us in “accompanying” them on their spiritual journey. If you are interested in the idea of “accompanying” I suggest you look at Maxine Green and Chandu Christians book: 'Accompanying Young People on their Spiritual Quest.' (Church House Publicity, 2000). Accompanying suggests that the youth worker is enabling young people to explore their spirituality; it implies mutual discovery and suggests that we are to be alongside young people, on the road, listening to each other, self and God.

As mentioned in session 3 ‘Christians’ were first called, “people of the way”, what a pertinent description of journeying?

ACTION: If you had to redefine the adjective that describes us as ‘Christian’ by choosing a new word for us as a collective – what would it be?

This theme then will help you understand something of the challenge we face as ‘church’ in ensuring that we are relevant to those around us without compromising the core values and beliefs that provide our sense of identity as the ‘body of Christ’.

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Thinking it through Some theory

There are many theoretical ‘angles’ we might take in looking at church, here are some examples with web links that will help you follow up if the theme is of interest:

Church history – how did we get here! http://www.allaboutreligion.org/church-history.htm

Emerging Church and Fresh Expressions of church – the new fangled approach to being culturally relevant church - http://www.freshexpressions.org.uk/ and if you go to http://www.freshexpressions.org.uk/category/story-tags/young%20people you will find some stories of emerging church/fresh expressions amongst young people (currently skateboarding connections from Perth, Ontario and café style church in Timperley Methodist Church)

Church statistics – what is going on in church? http://www.vexen.co.uk/UK/religion.html

Theology of/for church – what differing people believe and why - http://www.theologywebsite.com/history/

For the purpose of this theory section on church I want to offer a radical perspective on church that is growing out of some Street work that FYT is developing with young people outside of church that has as its final stage something that we call ‘church on the edge’ (COTE). I would like you to read this paper by Richard Passmore (StreetSpace project leader) and then I will offer some questions that will help you think through some of the issues raised;

StreetSpace came about as a response to the missionary culture we find ourselves in. We set out to see what emerging church and missionary youth work could learn from each other and in the process discovered a new way of thinking about church.

The theologian Bosch and writer of Transforming Mission says, “Theology rightly understood has no reason to exist other than to accompany the Missio-dei”. We follow a missionary God (Missio Dei) who constantly seeks out relationship with His creation. We see this through the Old Testament to the pinnacle of Jesus where God becomes the missionary to people. We see the Father send the Son, the Father and Son send the Spirit and together the trinity sends the church.

However, the rise of modernism and a more scientific approach to theology that seeks to categorise and demystify, has resulted in a theology and approach that is not accompanied by the Missio-dei. The outcome has been a settler approach to church for people who are on the inside rather than a pilgrim church that journeys with the missionary God into culture, new places and reaching new people.

At one level COTE and StreetSpace’s approach to church is very simple ‘where two or three are gathered’ God is their midst. So if you and some volunteers are out to engage with young people and intentionally seeking to grow church then you are, just that an expression of church. Church in the bible is very much a mystery (Ephesians 5 v 31-32) and is very hard to define. When the bible does talk about Church it uses metaphors and images like ‘the body’ or ‘the vine’. The common theme of the images suggests ’attitude and a course of action΄ (Dulles, Avery Models of the Church Doubleday 1978). In a fluid culture, I would suggest that a good image for church is that it is both the city on the hill and the journey to that city. This image has Church as the process and the outcome (attitude and a course of action), the journey and the destination. Dulles suggests ΄Instead of searching for some absolutely best image; it would be advisable to recognise that the many images in scripture and tradition are complimentary΄ (Dulles, Avery Models of the Church Doubleday 1978).

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However, in current society there seems to be a search for a single concept of Church, this is neither biblical nor possible when we are following the Missio Dei. We also know from tradition that church is more than the local expression but is part of the wider body. This approach must be upheld hence we arrive at the idea that StreetSpace is a GLOCAL church. Church as a mission community of dispersed people and local expressions of church with the young people we serve.

Questions for your reflection:

Richard writes, “The outcome has been a settler approach to church for people who are on the inside rather than a pilgrim church that journeys with the missionary God into culture, new places and reaching new people”. How do you understand this in your own setting?

What might you be doing as church if you were “… a pilgrim church that journeys with the missionary God into culture, new places and reaching new people”.

Richard writes, “Church as a mission community of dispersed people and local expressions of church with the young people we serve”. Use your imagination to explore what this might look like in your circumstances and situation? Do you foresee strengths and weaknesses if you were to adopt this position?

Faithing the FactsSome theology

The Bible says that the church is an organism not an organisation. It refers to these images:

The Body of Christ (I Corinthians 12 v 27; Romans 12 v 5) The Bride of Christ (Revelation 21 v 9) The flock of God (1 Peter 5 v 2) The living temple of the Holy Spirit (Ephesians 2 v 21-22) The vine (John 15 v 5 ) Where He comes to be among us (Matthew 18 v 20) A chosen people, a holy nation, a people belonging to God (Peter 2 v 9; Colossians 3 v 12) The family of God (1 Peter 4 v 17) A spiritual house ... A holy priesthood (1 Peter 2 v 5) Salt and light (Matthew 5 v13-16)

ACTION: Reflect or discuss how your current experience of church matches these underlying images and ideas about church

Here are 4 statements about church from varied theological positions. As you read them explore how they match your experience and note any ways in which they might inform your own local experience of church?

Statement 1: ‘The community of God’s people…called to serve him and called to live together in true Christian community as a witness to the character and values of His kingdom… The Gospel intends to call people to the body of Christ, that is, the community of believers with Jesus Christ as its essential and sovereign head.’ (Howard A. Snyder in Community of the King 1977)

Statement 2: ‘When I was young, the Church was presented to us as a hierarchical society: it was described as “juridically perfect”, having within itself all the powers necessary to insure and promote its own existence. This view reflected an image of the Church which was closely modelled on civil, even military society: there was a descending hierarchy, a uniformity which was considered as an ideal,

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and a tight discipline which extended to the smallest detail..’ (Cardinal J. Suenens in A New Pentecost? Translated by Francis Martin (New York: Seabury Press1975.)

Statement 3: ‘what is church? …a group of Christians who honour God by the way they interact with each other’ (p108 Chameleon or tribe-recovering authentic Christian community by Richard Keyes IVP 1999)

Statement 4: Significantly, Jesus rejected both religious and political hierarchical models for his followers in two related passages, Matthew 20: 2-28 and 23:1-12. Here we find such radical statements as these: “You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their high officials exercise authority over them. Not so with you. Instead, whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wants to be first must be your slave.” Matt 20 v 25-27

To reach those who are currently outside of the experience of church is a real challenge! To be inclusive enough so that those who are currently left out of church might begin to feel they belong will be more of a challenge for those of us on the ‘inside’ than it will be for those on the ‘outside’!

Here is some reflective theology from the USA based on a story from ‘The Urban Christian’ by Raymond Bakke with Jim Hart (MARC Europe 1987). Please ignore one or two gross generalisations in this passage and read it for the spirit of the story.

Congregation in Crisis

When I began my ministry at *** Baptist Church I had a congregation of 11 faithful souls. They had kept the church going for a long while, and although they were devoted to the idea of evangelism, I knew that as soon as we began to welcome newcomers in any numbers, there were bound to be difficulties. I started with work outside the church. I grew up in an athletic family and have always been interested insports, so I teamed up with two professional football players to form the Inner City Athletic Mission. We recruited Christian football players to challenge the gangs drinking on the beach to play football. We drew up lines on the beach, beat the stuffing out of them and invited them to a barbeque. We really roughed them up and were known as the ‘butcher priests’!

It was interesting evangelism and seemed congruent with the way the city functioned during the era of the Vietnam War. We recruited kids and formed leagues, took them on retreats, rented theatres for Billy Graham films, and had rock concerts on playgrounds. Christian men and women who were interested in sports moved into the city. We had people living with us all the time in those days. Basketball evangelism began to reach people whom the church was not reaching and one weekend 30 gang kids came to Christ on a retreat. The next weekend I invited them to church and they sat on the balcony. During the prelude a Mexican kid began a fist-fight with a Polish kid.

Now you don’t stop a gang fight. You just steer it down the stairs and stop the traffic. While I directed the traffic the boys continued to fight. Here they were, having just come to Christ, attacking one another; city kids have limited vocabularies, and fighting is a way of talking. The church people stood there pouring out their hatred for these kids like the Pharisees confronting Jesus and this became a crisis point for me. I was employed to do youth ministry by a church which would not accept the kids. The kids were racially mixed and had very different cultural backgrounds from the church people. They fought with their fists, but the church people were fighting with words, and for me this was the same.

ACTION: How would you be a ‘peace maker’ in this scenario? What would you do? How do you work in this kind of tense vacuum between ‘church’ and young people? Reflect on the tensions in your own church situation and your role as a ‘peace maker’.

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Story from the Edge This section provides a story from youth work practice that relates to the theme with reflective questions for you as an individual and/or in a group.

Story from the Edge    What a mess I’ve made of this discipleship thing! On the basis that failure often unlocks learning I’ve reflected on aspects of my experience. I respectfully suggest that many approaches to discipleship for young people need to move beyond the paradigms of ‘quick fix steps to successful victorious Christian living’ and into the arena of working at the transformation of the messy realms of reality.

Three young people I worked with became Christians, I was thrilled and as I carved another notch in my bible I bathed in the knowledge of heavenly parties! The trouble started a few years later when I realised that one of the young people was in prison (again!) and that the other had come to see me to check how he could undo his decision to be a Christian as it was too demanding. The third still lives near to me and we see each other regularly - he’s stuck with it, well perhaps a 33% “success” rate is not too bad! Or is it, what went wrong?

Firstly there’s my own misconceptions at that time that I was “called to make converts” rather than disciples. Too often plans for evangelism end at the point when the words “I do” are uttered, which probably offers insight into why we have so many failed marriages too! A whole range of questions need consideration for effective discipleship, these should include:

Who is responsible for discipleship? Do they know? Is it a shared responsibility or should someone have a “primary care” role? Who is looking after the person doing the discipling?

What model of discipleship is being adopted, it seems to me that the models range from too equally dangerous extremes, the “laissez-faire” approach of leaving it to anyone else through to “heavy shepherding” which is characterised by line management type control of others!

What method of teaching is going to work best? Should it be group based or individual or both? How will teaching take account of experience? Should it be programmed or spontaneous? What resources work?

How does the discipleship process stay culturally and socially relevant? What is the balance between traditional aspects of discipleship and cultural relevance? How do you take account of issues like neighbourhood/family background, social class, ethnicity, gender, and differing learning abilities?

Secondly I’ve learnt that there is ample evidence to question much of the baggage that churches want to load onto young Christian disciples. This is not always an aspect of conscious discipleship curriculum on the part of the church, however the unwritten collective assumptions in many churches prevent even the most tentative consideration of new forms of discipleship. Many of the youngsters that I have known, including the three mentioned above, would not normally consider faith or discipleship on the basis that they could never be good enough to be Christians. Where has this misunderstanding that Christians are good come from? My fear is that for some of us Christianity has become a sanctimonious self-righteous hobby. A hobby that has replaced a poignant and humbling knowledge of the fact that we are forgiven humans, relating to a gracious God through His own costly sacrifice. Black and white judgmental morality is in danger of replacing empathetic understanding of others, comfortably numb Christianity that has no time for a theology of ongoing salvation! And the baggage goes on:

Thou shalt conform to appropriate dress codes, jeans are out and no shorts - even if we do experience summer!

Thy language shall become increasingly elaborate and unrestricted ensuring that ye have holistic and contextualised knowledge of the inter-relatedness of all things theological!

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Your taste in music shall not permit you to experience a sense of worship whilst listening to anything which has not been submitted to the rigours of community singing or passed the repetitive strain point of mindless repetition.

Thirdly I’ve learnt that discipleship shouldn’t be left to Sundays. In many churches Sunday too often seems as if it’s for the temporary shelving of reality. Like the time a minister said at a friends funeral “we rest in the knowledge that life will always get better” – at least 95% of those there to mourn the parting of a friend switched off as the theory contradicted their experience. Sunday is a time to forget the fights that you had getting ready for church and pray for the fights in Kosova, a time to listen to excellent theories on how to live and never follow them up with any kind of review or discussion about application. Perhaps beside the umbrella racks in our church buildings we should also have “reality” and “experience” racks – so that people can leave these at the door too? For some people church has become a time to be “glad that you are not like other men” as you bask in the emotion of one more victorious chorus. I’m afraid that I never joined the “keep Sunday special campaign” I was too busy arguing that we should make Sunday special! How do we need to change our use of this special day? A few suggestions follow.

We need meetings that are meetings! Too often we assume that physical proximity constitutes a meeting! Don’t neglect meeting together says Paul - I’d like to emphasise the term TOGETHER, generally the term has come to mean that a lot of individuals meet on mass with a few individuals who stand at the front. This is not to criticise leadership it is rather to challenge leadership style. We need people who understand and apply the meaning of populist terms like ‘facilitation’, ‘empowerment’, ‘dialogue’ and ‘discourse’. Father Austin Smith once said, “in the church we need less sermons and more conversations” (amen!). Ways of being church need wider discussion than I can offer here, suffice to say that I believe discipleship training best occurs when we stop asking people to leave their reality at the church door and engage in more open dialogue together.

I also suggest that we might begin to see Sunday as a day of service rather than a day of services! Why is so much of our corporate church activity based upon models of worship that exclude Romans 12v2? This is your reasonable worship - to present yourself as a living sacrifice. This is no abstract statement about a posture for spiritual dance! But rather a challenge to act upon belief in costly questions and actions in the places that we seek to serve God. Wouldn’t it be interesting to have a Sunday meeting when we sing a hymn, read scripture, hear a five minute sermon, pray, go into our neighbourhood to find ways of applying what we hear for the rest of the day. We could then meet to have tea together and review our day! To learn from the mistakes and praise God for any success. I wonder what impact this might have on a sense of discipleship?

In a speech given before the Provincial Synod of the Southern Cone of the Anglican Church, the Archbishop of Canterbury George Carey warned that it is easy to merely talk about mission (and I’d add discipleship). He noted that in his diocese of Canterbury there is a “wonderful, ancient Church where there is an innocent sign in the Church porch. It reads, ‘Keep door firmly shut, sheep may enter’. And, for too many years, this has been the unspoken view of many Anglican Churches – this church is not for you, keep out!”

It’s my firm belief that church doors need to be wide open with a healthy flow in and out - in the church but not of the church! I believe that many young people will be interested and drawn to discipleship alongside a people who are exploring the implications of their beliefs in the complex interface with contemporary society and life.

  Dave Wiles (CEO of Frontier Youth Trust) 

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Don’t just stand there… This section contains ideas for action – methods, tools and approaches to engage with young people – based on the session subject/content.

ACTION: This first Action is for you to carry out with a few of your friends from the church or group that you are part of (please ensure that you engage with this exercise in an appropriate manner, for example, you may want to mention this to a leader or minister)

1. Is there any evidence of a gap between your wider church and the young people in it? Who

says? 2. Is there any evidence of a gap between your church and young people in the community it

seeks to serve? 3. List any things that your church has in common with its own young people… do these

things promote or inhibit a greater sense of ‘togetherness’ or community? What else could be done to bridge or prevent any gap being present?

4. Is the church itself Good News for young people? How does it show them this? 5. How much or little do church members know about the young people? What would it take

to encourage greater interest? 6. How much or little do the young people know about the church? Do they want to know

more? How could you encourage this?7. What action might you want to take together as a result of reflecting on these questions?

This action is NOT offered to be critical about the church or group that you are part of. It is to enable some honest reflection that might lead to some constructive change.

ACTION: A simplistic view of church is that it is basically a bunch of people (Christians) who are linked by the values and beliefs they share, and the practices they engage in. What values do you think people outside the church, think the church holds? Could you list them? What are the implications of the assumptions that people outside of church make about church and what might the church do about these assumptions?

Note: you could check out the ‘assumptions’ that you have identified in the exercise above by discussing them with the people you know that don’t go to church

ACTION: Look at the selection of images of Biblical concepts of church - choose a few and answer the following:

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Describe the characteristics of this image - is it a good image? Why? Are there any limitations on using this image? Explain. How is this image reflected in your local church today?

Note: you could use this exercise with young people too.

CHURCH QUESTIONS FOR REFLECTION:

How did Jesus encourage the first disciples to impact their own community and those they went to? What kind of an impact did the early Church in Acts (chapters 1-4) have on their local community? What sort of things were these first Christians known for?What is your local Christian community known for? What do you think a church should be known for? How could your church make a bigger impact?

ACTION: Consider reading Philip Pullman’s latest book ‘The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ’ (many young people who are into reading probably will). I have read it recently and whilst some people will be offended by the approach (which is JUST a story) I think it offers some insight into thinking around the person of Jesus and the ensuing development of church as an institution. What Pullman has done is to take the Gospel accounts of Jesus and weave them into a story that runs along the lines of the Gospel narratives, but with one significant change! He splits the character of Jesus of Nazareth into twin brothers, one named Jesus, and the other Christ. Jesus seems to me to be the Jesus of the Sermon on the Mount; radical, unconventional and charismatic. However, ‘Christ’ as a character is a well meaning ‘Paul like’ figure that ‘touches up’ the stories in the interest of the development of a future powerful institution. Pullman, who is well known for his antagonism to church, has offered a version of the story that offers a perspective on Jesus that offers us the chance to admire the historic Jesus but question what was done with His teaching and life story by those who want to use religious behaviours, values and fears as a way to control others. It seems to me to provide an opportunity to illustrate our need to apologise for much of what church has done and become and get on with what Jesus taught, lived, died and was resurrected for! The book may anger or frustrate you – but I think it worth reflecting upon.

ACTION: Bring together some young people from outside of the church with a similar number of young people from inside the church (on neutral territory, for example a café) and ask their help in looking at ways that the church might become more relevant to those on the outside of it. I have found that seeking young peoples authentic help is a great way to engage them.

ACTION: Use Pip Wilson and Ian Long’s ‘The Big Book of Blobs’ (available via http://www.incentiveplus.co.uk/) to explore with young people (those in church, or on the fringe, or outside) where they feel they might be ‘located’ in relation to church. The Big Book of Blobs offers a photocopiable collection of blob pictures to promote social and emotional discussion. Each blob picture offers a unique way to initiate discussion about all sorts of issues and subjects. The blobs are completely devoid of age, religion, gender or social status so are open to the interpretation of the user. The Big Book of Blobs is a very useful communication tool for those who don’t like expressing how they feel, but can also be used as ice-breakers, group activities or to discuss team work. Each picture is accompanied by ideas and questions to kick-start class, group or one-to-one discussion. Whilst it may seem expensive at £35.95 I think it is worth every penny!

ACTION: Encourage your church to visit every local business, agency, institution and ask them for items for prayer. Take pictures of the key personalities and buildings/shops/schools etc and display with the prayer items in your church.

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AOBSome contacts, resources, links that relate to the session subject/content

Training:

Christian Youth Work Training – www.cywt.org.uk provides information about Christian youth work training in the UK. The site is now run by David Howell, a freelance consultant in the fields of training, Further Education, Higher Education and Christian youth work.

Frontier Youth Trust - please contact if we can help you to look a little deeper at this theme or other youth work related topics. www.fyt.org.uk

Some Web Based Resources:

Damaris at: http://www.damaris.org/ Damaris is an educational charity with a Christian foundation - but working with people of all faiths and none. Damaris is committed to rigorous study and effective communication as they seek to relate biblical Christian faith and contemporary popular culture.

UK Youth at: http://www.ukyouth.org/ UK Youth is the leading national youth work charity supporting over 750,000 young people, helping them to raise their aspirations, realise their potential and have their achievements recognised via non-formal, accredited education programmes and activities

National Youth Agency (NYA) at: http://www.nya.org.uk/ The National Youth Agency works in partnership with a wide range of public, private and voluntary sector organisations to support and improve services for young people. Their particular focus is on youth work

Recommended Books:

‘Youth Work After Christendom’ by Nigel and Jo Pimlott ‘Growing Up Evangelical: Youthwork and the making of a subculture’ and/or ‘Youthwork and the

‘Mission of God’ by Pete Ward ‘Threshold of the Future: Reforming the Church in the Post-Christian West’ by Michael Riddell, SPCK ‘Accompanying Young People on their Spiritual Quest’ by Maxine Green and Chandu Christian

(2000) Church House Publicity

A very helpful listing of Christian youth work literature can be found at http://www.infed.org/youthwork/b-ywchri.htm

Amen CornerSome ideas to pray about this theme

ACTION: With a friend or two spend some time walking around the area that your church is in and pray as you walk (keep your eyes open!) Spend time talking and listening to local people that you meet. When you have completed your ‘prayer walk’ reflect on what you learnt and what you felt God might have been telling you

Look again at the images of church that you are offered in this session and use them as a focal point for meditative prayer – what might god be saying to you about your part in the body of Christ? Pray for those that you do church with – call them to mind and seek god’s blessing in their lives.