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SUPPORTING CHURCHES TO ENGAGE CHILDREN, YOUTH AND FAMILIES

Children and Youth Ministry Support in the Diocese of London

Recruitment now open for the Apprentice Programme – find out more here

Click to each section below to expand them.

Employed by the Diocese of London, our team supports anyone engaging children, young people or families within our worshipping 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.

If you have a question, or are looking for something and cannot find it on this page, feel free to email us!

Support for church leaders

The team has a number of different options for support available:

  • Consultancy – answering questions, signposting resources and helping refine strategies
  • Recruitment support – from drafting role descriptions to interviewing and onboarding
  • The Launchpad course – training for clergy in partnership with Youthscape
  • The Growing Younger Development Pathway – focused support for a church over a period of time

Support for employees in children/youth/family ministry roles

It is vital that paid workers feel supported in their role and we aim to help churches in a number of ways:

  • 1:1 support – Informal coaching to tackle issues head on and help sustain them in the role
  • Networking – Regular meetups to help people connect with and learn from others, solving problems together in person and through the online learning community
  • Cultivate – A course for anyone in a paid role without degree-level certification
  • Mighty Leaders – An online learning community with essential guidance, training and content to increase the skills and confidence of volunteers and their leaders.

Support for volunteers in children/youth/family ministry

Most things wouldn’t happen in a churches without volunteers. We aim to help churches in a number of ways:

  • 1:1 support – Informal coaching for volunteers who are leading others or managing a rota without a paid worker
  • Training events – In-person and online throughout the year, either run by the diocesan team or organised locally by Areas
  • Mighty Leaders – An online learning community with essential guidance, training and content to increase the skills and confidence of volunteers and their leaders.

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 Apprentice Programme, which is a great opportunity to train someone from within your church.

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.

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 & Youth
Ministry Support

Sarah Agnew
Children & Families
Ministry Advisor

Mike Rutt
Youth Ministry
Advisor (CONCRETE)

Kathryn Kane
Schools Ministry, RE &
Collective Worship Advisor

Emma Biddle
Programme Manager, Growing Younger

Levi Phillips
Creative Lead, Growing Younger

Ruth Etang
Apprentice Programme Coordinator
& Administrator, The Spark Fund

GROWING YOUNGER – A 2030 VISION PRIORITY

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

The Children and Youth Ministry Support team is focused on helping churches to prioritise growing younger.

UPDATES AND STORIES

Watch and Pray: A lent journey for children

Sarah Agnew shares her review of the Church of England’s children’s resource for Lent.

Bishop Emma leads Kensington Area Schools Mission

From 30 October to 10 November, a Kensington Area Schools’ Mission ran across six Church of England secondary schools.

Five simple ideas that will connect with families over Christmas

Sarah from the Children and Youth Support team offers five simple ideas that will help churches connect with families over the Christmas period.

Volunteers: Could this be the next step for you?

A call to consider stepping beyond volunteering with children or young people…

TRAINING EVENTS AND PROGRAMMES

Each year we aim to tackle various hot topics as well as foundational ones with an array of courses, seminars and events. We aim to provide encouragement, expertise and a safe community for sharing experiences and ideas.

Toddler groups: everything you need to know

6 March, 19:30-20:30 | Online workshop

Be inspired by stories of how churches started their toddler groups, tips on what to put in place first and take away some actions to try! This workshop is for anyone looking to lead or supervise activities for parents and toddlers in a church context.

Come and learn what you need to put in place and tips for early success, hear stories from people who have walked the journey and take away some clear actions to get a group going.

Employed workers meetup

Weds 20 March, 10:00-12:30 | London Diocesan House

If you are employed in any capacity by a church in the Diocese of London to work with families, children or young people, you’re welcome to join us for morning refreshments and a mini workshop.

At this meetup, we’ll be discussing going the long road: sustaining ourselves and our volunteers.

Please register in advance and indicate if you have any accessibility or dietary requirements so our team can host you well.

See you there!

TRAINING PROGRAMMES

BLMF apprentices 2018-19

The Apprentice Programme

RECRUITMENT IS OPEN - APPLY NOW

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.

Cultivate

A short-term development programme for paid workers

Cultivate equips people with the tools they need to have a greater impact on the community they serve. We take delegates on a 5-month journey with coaching, group reflection and self-guided learning. This combination of learning, practice and sharing will build confidence and equip people to thrive whilst working for a church.

Launchpad

Contextual youth ministry training for clergy

Although some people become ordained having previously been a youth or children’s worker, most reach their first incumbency having had zero training or experience in working with young people. This course, developed in partnership with Youthscape, helps clergy start or develop youth work in their parish relevant to their context, with support and teaching from experienced practioners along the way.

Find out more on Youthscape’s website. If you would like to attend a Launchpad course, speak to your Area Bishop.

RESOURCES FOR CHURCHES

The team work with people from across the Diocese of London and beyond to create relevant, practical resources that directly address the challenges we face as a diocese. Some of these are downloadable materials, some are courses. The goal is to make things that help our worshipping communities create lasting impact.

Download the resources created so far below and feel free to email us at youth@nulllondon.anglican.org if you have an idea for a resource that every church could use.

Stay in the loop…

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 via our these links – then share the page with your church if you want people to be equipped and inspired!

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Mighty Leaders: our online learning community

For anyone volunteering or working with children and young people, run by our team.

Anyone who joins Mighty Leaders will get ongoing access to a growing library of content, guidance, courses and opportunities as this online community develops.

🎓 Increase your confidence, skills and knowledge in working with children and young people

💬 Learn from and discuss what other churches are doing and what resources they’re using

🎉 Connect with a community of others in similar roles who are keen to grow and celebrate the small wins

TSF logo banner whosoever

The Spark Fund

Granting young people funds to try missional ideas

The Spark Fund helps 12-25s in the Diocese of London run a missional project. Young people are given the chance to come up with ideas to help their friends explore the Christian faith then granted the funds to make it happen. The idea could be anything; an organised event, online media channel or something else entirely.

Confirmed

Confirmed: Your Four-Week Journey to Confirmation

An adaptable course to prepare young people for confirmation

This free course written by a youth worker covers Christian disciplines in a way that young people can easily understand and try for themselves. The resource pack gives you everything you need to run the course, including print and slide templates, cheat sheets and instructions for ordering the badges. There is no charge for the resource pack, but you’ll need to pay for badges if you want to award them.

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Getting Started in Schools

How to build relationships and help schools fulfil curriculum requirements

This short booklet shares insights from those working in schools to bring you a range of tips, examples and guidance on building relationships and developing activities, including how to use OFSTED curriculum requirements to create an offer that’s hard for schools to turn down.

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Vocalise: Created by young people, for young people

Videos that start conversations about faith

VOCALISE is a series of short videos filmed by five young people exploring Christianity. The questions are simple, the answers are unscripted and the footage was shot by young people borrowing a camera over a week. These videos will help anyone start meaningful conversations among young people in their church.

PCC Playing cards

Young People and the Church: The Ideation Session

Brilliant strategies for being a bit more welcoming

Created in collaboration with Church Times cartoonist Dave Walker, this adaptable session will help your church figure out some suitable and feasible things you could try to welcome and engage young people more. Have a laugh and generate meaningful discussion with your PCC, small group or leadership team.

RESOURCE 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!

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.

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

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.

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.

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
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