Welcome to the youth ministry blog! We’ve finally launched and hopefully it’s here to stay. In actual fact, it’s definitely here to stay; we’re committed to doing this, so we’ve properly resourced it with an editor and have found from around the Diocese a brilliant team of writers who blend experience as practitioners and also quite a lot of academic credentials as well! Hopefully it will be something you can come back to each week to be encouraged, challenged and learn something new.
We’ve been on something of a journey with our support for youth ministry. I’m of course using the phrase ‘been on something of a journey’ in the true Christian way where it means ‘it’s not gone according to plan’, not in the reality TV version where it means ‘we used to think you were an idiot but now you’ve grown up a bit’.
Our ‘journey’ has been caused by the fact that we didn’t manage to find quite the right person to lead our youth ministry support. So we have been looking at how we can get all the support our Diocese needs in place for youth ministry but without that key person.
It’s not been an easy problem to solve but I think we are making some progress. In the next few weeks we should be able to publish a strategy to explain how we are going to do that. It’s been a conundrum but I do think we are getting this together into something quite exciting.
I must also say that this has been quite a journey for me personally. Having been long established as the ‘children’s work’ person in the Diocese I was expecting to manage a Youth Adviser who could be our expert in the field. Now my role has dramatically changed and I’m having to navigate my way through a new world of youth work and build a network of people whom I’ve never met, despite my being in the Diocese for seven years! We are hugely indebted to Ben Bell from Urban Hope and James Fawcett from Concrete, who have done a lot of work to help, both in terms of expertise and leg work.
So this blog, together with the youth ministry newsletter, is the first fruits of our efforts to build a network of youth workers in the Diocese and support you all better. I hope you enjoy it. If you would like to join the team of writers or if there’s a subject you’d like to be covered, then please let me know.