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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

The Diocese of London employs a team of people whose role is to support those working with children and youth within our church communities.

We provide direct support and guidance, create online resources and develop partnerships with ministry specialists to help churches reach their full potential in engaging children and young people.

If you are interested in developing children or youth work in your church, have a look around the webpages here, 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

One of the most valuable things we can provide is a brain to pick! The Diocese of London has partnered with CONCRETE to provide free consultancy on engaging young people – a youth ministry organisation with a specialism in urban areas. Founder James Fawcett has been working with young people full-time for the last 15 years in a variety of contexts and for the last 10 of them in the east end of London, Tower Hamlets. Contact us to book a session.

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.

We started gathering anyone working with children and youth online in March 2020, to provide community, encouragement and a platform for exchanging ideas to those feeling isolated in their roles. To receive updates on these, subscribe to our email list and follow us on Twitter and Facebook. You can watch most of our livestreams over on our Facebook page, including previous sessions.

Practical content and resources

We develop and curate practical content and resources on a regular basis and push these to our email subscribers and social media channels. Connect with us and share these links with others in your church to follow:

Subscribe for content and resources delivered to your inbox.

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

Katie O’Conor
Children’s Ministry Advisor

Kathryn Kane
Schoolswork, RE and Collective Worship Advisor

Mike Rutt
Youth Ministry Advisor (CONCRETE)

Emma Biddle
Project Manager, Growing Younger,
Apprenticeship Scheme Coordinator

Levi Phillips
Creative Lead, Growing Younger

Jacob Holme
Administrator, The Spark Fund

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

Seminars, workshops and events

Each year we aim to tackle various ‘hot topics’ as well as foundational ones with an array of training workshops and seminars. We also aim to provide community, encouragement and a platform for exchanging ideas to those feeling isolated in their roles. To receive updates on these, subscribe to our email list and follow us on Twitter and Facebook. You can watch most of our livestreams over on our Facebook page, including previous sessions.

Nothing scheduled right now! Check back later or email us if you’d like to run something more bespoke for churches in your area.

LATEST CONTENT AND NEWS

  • All
  • Children's Ministry
  • Christmas
  • Growing Younger
  • Youth ministry
Levi Phillips from the Growing Younger team took a few minutes to chat with Samuel Taylor about the story behind Youth East and its first conference for young people in East London, coming up in March.

The story behind Youth East and its first conference for young people

Levi Phillips from the Growing Younger team took a few minutes to chat with Samuel Taylor about the story behind Youth East and its first conference for young people in East London, coming up in March.

Katie O'Conor shares her takeaways from a conference for those ministering to children and families.

3 things I’m taking away from the Hand in Hand conference

Katie O’Conor shares her takeaways from a conference for those ministering to children and families.

If you are 18-30 and want to find out who and what God is calling you to be, then consider this fully funded year of experience in a parish

London Ministry Experience Scheme September 2023

If you are 18-30 and want to find out who and what God is calling you to be, then consider this fully funded year of experience in a parish

A Christmas message from The Bishop of London for children across the Diocese of London and beyond.

A Christmas message to children from the Bishop of London

A Christmas message from The Bishop of London for children across the Diocese of London and beyond.

LOAD MORE

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

GROWING YOUNGER

‘Growing Younger’ is a priority for the Diocese of London’s 2030 vision to see every Londoner encounter the love of God in Christ. Building on Capital Youth, it is the next phase of churches working together to bring cultural and systemic change that helps our church grow younger in several ways.

  • Growing in numbers of children and young people
  • Growing in discipleship of children and young people
  • Growing younger leaders
  • Growing in our response to issues that matter to children and young people
BLMF Apprentices 2018-19

APPRENTICESHIP SCHEME

We are working with parishes across the Diocese of London to train a new generation of children and youth workers from within our communities.

With funding support, Apprentices are employed by the Diocese and work within a parish for three years, enabling parishes to significantly expand or develop their youth and children’s ministry. We have four funded places available each year.

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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