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WE ARE GROWING YOUNGER

Children and Youth Ministry Support in the Diocese of London

Welcome! What are you looking for?

Support in my role

Training and events

Content, news and resources

Initiatives I can join in with

WHAT WE DO

Employed by the Diocese of London, our team supports anyone engaging children, young people or families within our church communities. We provide direct support and guidance, create online resources and develop partnerships to help churches in their mission to children and young people. We are also responsible for championing the Growing Younger priority in the Diocese of London’s 2030 Vision.

If you are interested in developing children or youth work in your church, have a look around this page, then talk to your vicar or safeguarding lead, or email the children and youth support team at youth@nulllondon.anglican.org or children@nulllondon.anglican.org.

SUPPORT WE PROVIDE

Advice and consultancy

Some of the most valuable things we can provide are time and experience. We have a variety of expertise within the team and can help anyone in a paid or voluntary role determine what to prioritise, start or stop. Whether you need advice, an external person to process with or a whole strategy workshop, we can help. Contact us and we’ll connect you with the right person.

Practical content and resources

We develop and curate practical content and resources on a regular basis and share these with our email subscribers and social media followers. Connect with us on Twitter, Facebook or Instagram and subscribe to our emails – then share these links with your church if you want people to be equipped and inspired!

Training, seminars and events

We organise events and training opportunities to address the wide variety of topics relevant to those who work with children and youth. You can watch most of our previous livestreams over on our Facebook page, or our YouTube channel.

Recruitment

We can support you in recruiting the right person for your community and helping them settle in. Whatever stage you’re at in the process, feel free to contact us.

Things we can help with include:

  • Refining the job scope and job description
  • Guidance on the right salary and benefits
  • Safeguarding expectations and processes
  • Guidance on what to expect and how to manage them
  • Distributing the vacancy through our networks
  • Ongoing supervision/advisory support

Email us if you’d like support with any of the above. Be sure to check the Diocese of London’s guidance for in-depth walkthrough of the safe recruitment process for churches.

If your vacancy is already online, you can submit your vacancy to be displayed on the Diocese jobs page. Make sure you’re also aware of our Apprenticeship Scheme, which is a great opportunity to train someone from within your parish.

Looking for a job?

Check the vacancies page, or find out more about our Apprenticeship Scheme below. Some churches in our Diocese do not submit their job vacancies to our jobs page, so keep an eye out on social media.

MEET THE TEAM

Our team has a wide range of expertise and skills, which we apply to many projects and scenarios. Several of the team are also assigned as contact points for Episcopal Areas, to help us support and stay up to date at a local level.

Sam Donoghue
Head of Children and Youth Ministry Support

Mike Rutt
Youth Ministry Advisor (CONCRETE)

Kathryn Kane
Schoolswork, RE and Collective Worship Advisor

Emma Biddle
Project Manager, Growing Younger,
Apprenticeship Scheme Coordinator

Levi Phillips
Creative Lead, Growing Younger

Jacob Holme
Administrator, The Spark Fund

WHAT IS GROWING YOUNGER?

Growing Younger is a priority for churches as part of the Diocese of London’s 2030 vision to see every Londoner encounter the love of God in Christ.

We will start to realise this vision when every child within our diocese:

  • Lives in a parish that has a plan to welcome children and young people.
  • Lives near a church doing good, well-resourced youth and children’s work.
  • Lives near a church that has made a positive impact on their life as they have grown up.
  • Lives in a deanery with at least one church working to reach new young people and providing regular worship events for young people.
  • Meets Christians inside their school doing excellent schools ministry.
  • Has a clear link to a church doing excellent youth work if they attend a Church of England school

 

Our team runs a number of programmes that support churches to prioritise growing younger. Soon, we’ll be publishing new resources like checklists, recommendations and courses to help your church make small but significant changes to help the community increase its capacity to grow younger in these ways.

TRAINING

The Learning Hub

We’ve launched a new online space for learning, where anyone can sign up and develop key skills required for children and youth ministry.

Courses now available for free:

  • Academy Basics: Children’s Edition
  • Academy Basics: Youth Edition
  • Develop Your Vision, Values and Strategy
  • Building a Volunteer Team
  • Working With Families
  • Working With Schools
Go to The Learning Hub

LATEST CONTENT AND NEWS

  • All
  • Children's Ministry
  • Growing Younger
  • Training
  • Youth ministry
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A call to consider stepping beyond volunteering with children or young people…

Three children and youth workers share their experiences of volunteering.

The joy of volunteering with children and young people 

Three children and youth workers share their experiences of volunteering.

Kensington Area Youth Comedy Night

Kensington Area Youth Comedy Night

At the latest Kensington Area event, young people and their leaders from churches gathered with Bishop Emma at St Alban’s, Acton Green to … Read more

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Messy Cathedral 2023

The first day of April saw the welcome return of Messy Cathedral for the first time since 2019

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RESOURCES & RECOMMENDATIONS

Whilst our team’s remit doesn’t involve producing curriculum resources, we spend a lot of time curating and signposting resources we find across the internet, and develop our own when there is a particular focus or objective. Below you’ll find a mix of these – be sure to check out our ‘database’ for a growing library of stuff we approve of!

Resources database for children & youth ministry

We are compiling an online database of resources for working with children, youth and families, to save a bit of time on the discovery process! We’ve added a column to flag resources you can use or adapt remotely. Below you can filter and sort the resources we’ve added, and if you think any are missing, submit one here.

Resources on diversity, racism and racial injustice

This is a small collection of resources to get you started on having informed conversations around the topics of race, diversity, and justice. This is by no means exhaustive, so if you would like to recommend something for those specifically working with children and youth, let us know at youth@nulllondon.anglican.org.

 

Books for children and young people

Books for adults

Articles

Extensive curations of resources

Websites and social media channels

Supporting children and youth through grief

No two people grieve in the same way. In this time where support for children and youth is increasingly important during a loss of loved ones, those who work or volunteer with them should feel confident and knowledgeable on how they can help.

The Diocese of London’s Children and Youth Support ran this online workshop to cover the key areas of supporting people through grief. The session used additional breakout groups throughout to create a more comfortable environment for sharing from experience. These were not recorded but are noted so you can reflect for yourself.

LINKS TO RESOURCES

Safeguarding guidance for working online

Safeguarding guidance for working online

Safeguarding guidance for working online remains the same.

Follow the Diocesan Safeguarding Guidelines and talk to your vicar or safeguarding lead if in any doubt. Any concerns raised in parishes should be brought to the attention of the Church Safeguarding Officer, who can seek advice from the DST. Other areas of the Diocese (e.g. chaplaincies) should contact the DST directly.

For guidance around online video conferencing with young people, see this guide from the Diocese of Worcester.

Safeguarding concerns can be raised by phone or by email.

  • Concerns raised via email should be sent to our Safeguarding Inbox in the first instance: safeguarding@nulllondon.anglican.org.
  • Alternatively, to speak to a member of the DST, please call our Safeguarding Helpline on 020 7932 1224.

Online activities for young people, children and families

Various churches have developed online alternatives to their normal children and youth activities, which may be appropriate for people from other churches to join in with. If you are looking for great online activities to point young people to, HTB Youth, Virtual Sunday School and Worship for Everyone have been consistently producing live and recorded content.

If you’re making things specifically for children and/or youth, email us!


Online content for youth

Online content for children/families

Games to play online

  • The Methodist Church published this handy little PDF with lots of ideas for games you can play on Zoom
  • If you have a small number, Jackbox Games have some good games. You buy packs, then each player uses their phone to play. Make sure you select “family friendly” in the settings, as some games have some adult material.
  • If you want to hop aboard the hype train, Among Us is a free-to-play game on mobile (or £4 on PC) that young people generally love playing at the moment. It’s like a murder mystery, but you control the characters in a game (check with parents if you’re unsure about suitability).

Ideas for activities to enjoy together

  • Go on a virtual museum tour whilst on a video call
  • Have a “3,2,1, play” YouTube watch party on a video call
  • Record a video together to share with your church
  • Write a song together
  • Have a poetry slam contest

CURRENT INITIATIVES

BLMF Apprentices 2018-19

APPRENTICE PROGRAMME

The Apprentice Programme aims to start new mission activity among children and youth in church communities across the Diocese of London, and raise up a new generation of children and youth workers from within our communities.

Find out more

THE SPARK FUND

The Spark Fund helps 12-25s in the Diocese of London run a missional project.

We’re looking for young people to come up with innovative ways to help their friends explore the Christian faith. The idea could be anything; an organised event, online media channel or something else entirely.

Find out more

Contact us at youth@nulllondon.anglican.org

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