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Youth Work in a Church Plant
Wayne Parsons shares the story of starting a youth group in a church plant in Luton.
I was asked by Tony Thompson in 2002 to join the Luton church plant and to lead the youth work. I had just come to the end of a year out working with a thriving youth work in St Neots and felt a calling to continue working with young people seeing them meet with Jesus, become disciples and play a part in His church. Hope church Luton started with many families with young children, there was only one teenager in the initial core. This was a big challenge but over the years we have seen young people play a great role in Hope church, with many becoming Christians, getting baptised and being disciples of Jesus Christ.
At the very beginning of Hope church Luton we decided that young people were important and we wanted young people to play a significant role in the church. I believe that it is important to decide the level of resource you want to put into young people within a church plant. A full time youth worker compared to a willing volunteer doing the job in their spare time is significantly different; it would be unfair to expect the same fruit with significantly less resource. That said, I have many friends that have built outstanding youth works as well as having full time secular jobs. As a youth worker in a church plant I learnt quickly that it would take time to build the group I had vision for. I had left a group that was well established, where young people were regularly attending church meetings, they were in a routine of worshipping and studying scripture together, we had a core group that had the church’s vision and values and many were building their friends into what was established. In the church plant I realised that I didn’t have any of those things and I would have to firstly gather a group that I could build up and take some where.
In the same way a church plant goes through different stages while it is being established, a youth work does the same…
The gathering stage
In every town there are young people and I believe that any creative person can gather a group of young people to work with. When we first started our youth work we put on a social evening where young people could hang out, play games and eat tuck, we didn’t dive into any thing spiritual, even though we were upfront about being Christians, we wanted to gather a group first that we could then take some where. In the first few months I would invite any teenager I met to our social evening, young people off the streets, young people of families looking in on the church plant, friends of young people, all started to come along. Schools are also great places to get to know young people, in our church plant we had many teachers so I offered to get involved in schools as much as I could; lunch time groups, school trips, mentoring, assemblies and lessons were all ways I got to know young people and raised the profile of what we were doing as a church and we saw many young people come from the schools I and others in the church were involved in.
Building a team
A key part of establishing a youth work is building a team, and I don’t think you need to wait until the church is established before you do this. I found that getting people involved in the youth work in the initial stages of the church plant really helped people build into the church and feel that they had a role to play. Having a team also gave us a strong foundation to build on. Numbers of our initial youth leaders have gone on to be significant leaders in the church so youth leadership can be a great place to train and develop people. Once we gathered a small group of young people that were getting involved in the church plant, I decided to partner up with another local Newfrontiers youth group that was more established. I would regularly take my group and team over to their group so that I could involve them in something more spiritual. This gave me opportunity to expose them and envision them to something more like what we wanted to build. Taking them over to a bigger group worked really well in us being able to build our own core group up ready to launch something more established back into Luton when it was ready. I would encourage any small group to look to do this. Taking our small group to big events also gave them good exposure to spirit filled worship times, good gospel teaching and caught them up in the bigger vision of Newfrontiers and building church. I believe it is important to keep exposing smaller groups to bigger settings so they don’t get into a small group mindset, it is important for them to think big and want growth, if this is not built into a group it is in danger of not growing.
Vision
Keeping inline with the church vision was really important to us as we didn’t want to build a youth ministry but young people into our church. Our church vision and structure has always been worked out through cell groups so I wanted to build out of the same vision and structure with the young people. I realised early on in the church plant that a crowd of young people is not a church youth group so have always looked to build a youth group that is integrated into the heart of the church with the same values running through it that run through the whole church. One time we shut down a social evening that gathered over a 100 young people to put on an alpha course, I knew we would loose many of the young people that had attended the social evening but I knew we would keep some that would go onto being great disciples. I always ask myself the question “Am I building something that will make disciples and am I equipping my church young people to be great disciples?” If I ever answer no to this question then I am quick to change what we are doing.
Youth as a resource
Young people are a great resource to a church plant. We got ours involved in children’s work, publicising the church, serving on Sunday mornings, worship team members, we have always encouraged them to get along to prayer meetings, any church social events and to get to know people of all ages in the church. I believe it is important that young people own the local church and see they are key within it. I’m not too fussed if young people like to sit in a group together on a Sunday morning but I am fussed if they never come out of that group and engage with the rest of their church family. Young people need to belong and giving them value and responsibility within a church helps them discover who God has made them to be. Every church plant will be different and every youth leader will be unique to who God has made them to be, however it is vital for us that lead young people that we are always growing in our love and commitment to Him. That as we look to help young people become disciples we ourselves are keeping our eyes fixed on Him whilst giving our lives to seeing His church established around us. What we build will come out of what we are building personally with Him.
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