I’ve been involved as a volunteer with the youth work at my church for about five years now. Over that time, we’ve never had a professional youth worker, but I’ve worked with a succession of different volunteer leaders. We’ve had some great laughs, some difficult times and I have consistently avoided going on the weekend away (mainly so that I could watch the Eurovision Song Contest).
Over these years, the youth work itself has looked very different. From large numbers of young people attending a Friday night social club and low numbers on a Sunday to the other way round. From having lots of space and resources to trying to run a group of more than 20 in a small office. But over those times, we’ve always run a Friday night club and a Sunday group during the Sunday church services.
Recently, we’ve had to take the difficult decision to close the Friday night club. Numbers were down and showed no sign of recovering, and other churches in the area were running groups at the same time. We were still getting good numbers on a Sunday morning so we decided to focus our resources for the moment on the discipleship of those young people who were already part of our church community.
It was a sad decision to take – many churches with young people in them take this Friday/Sunday approach and it felt like we were going backwards or admitting defeat. The social groups of others were a success and ours wasn’t. At the same time, five of the six people on the Sunday morning team decided it was time to stop volunteering, for various reasons. So, we had decided to stop Friday nights and concentrate on Sunday mornings, but only had one leader committed to carrying on.
However, a proactive recruitment drive from the member of the church leadership team responsible for youth ministry has resulted in a new team of 12, with more people being approached. The church leader used many of the recruitment tactics also outlined in our two recent posts about building a team. Now we are exploring an approach to help young people meet God and learn more about him, and how they are in him.
What had seemed like doors closing, with the cessation of the Friday group and the sudden loss of Sunday team members, might just have turned into God doing something new. It’s still early days and difficult to see exactly where God is taking us, but it’s fair to say that these changes have been a reminder that it’s God’s work, not ours. That means we shouldn’t keep on with something that isn’t working because it’s what we think we should be doing. We shouldn’t cling to the past. We should look forward to the new. I’m sure, further down the track, we’ll slice our ministry in half and see the evidence of God’s pruning and growth. But till then, we’ll turn from the closed door to the one that’s just opening.
Alex Taylor manages the youth blog for the Diocese of London and is a not-so-secret fan of the Eurovision Song Contest.