his is the official end of term blog that I’ve been asked to write, before the whole thing goes quite till September. I hope you’ve enjoyed reading it and that it’s been an excellent source of resource and support for you in your ministry.
One of the issues we have, as we work to develop youth and children’s ministry in the Diocese, is the scale of the task. There are approximately 450 parishes that make up our patch and much as we would love to be able to come and visit all of them and help in person, that’s going to take many years! That’s why we put a lot of effort into trying to make our communications the best we can, so that you can access them at a time and a place that works for you and feel part of this great community of amazing people that do so much to make our churches places where children and young people feel at home.
Come the autumn we’ll be back with the usual diet of blog posts (though our Twitter feed and Facebook page will be running throughout the holidays), plus a few new innovations that I shall give you a sneaky preview of now. Firstly we will be running a year-long youth ministry course to parallel our established Children’s Ministry Academy course that will start in October. This course will be designed to deepen people’s thinking around the youth work and will cover all the key thinking in the area. It’s a must for any paid worker and a significant step forward for a volunteer.
Secondly the video news updates will be becoming a more regular thing. You can view the pilot below but we will be doing this more and hopefully it will become a useful resource for you, as we are able to show you new resources – quite hard to do in written text!
Have an excellent summer, see you in September.
Sam Donoghue is Head of Children and Youth Support for the Diocese of London and a serial coffee-shop lingerer.