Youth Ministry and Support in Credit Crunch
Great thoughts from Ian (and commenters) around engaging adolescents and supporting youth ministry in a time of financial restraint.
Quotes:
"I am very concerned that youth work seems to be an immediate target for cuts"
"Yes, I know I am biased BUT I passionately believe that any further steps back from the Churches engagment with adolescents is to fail the young people we should be serving AND to miss out on how much we can learn from them."
A hearty "amen" from me!

Links
2 Posts from Jon to check out:
"Recommended resources for new youth ministers", check the comments too. I would add "The Godbearing Life" by Dean and Foster as a must read

Also "The future of statutory youth work" which raises some important questions

Working Together
Great post from Chris looking at partnership in youth ministry.
Calling for more "joined up thinking" with partnerships within the church, between churches and with other agencies. Essential stuff.

Of course partnership is never easy.
In my experience it is easier to get youth leaders to work together than "clergy", because they often see the need and benefit of partnership on the ground and tend to be less bogged down with politics.
And I favour the language of partnership between churches over "ecumenism".

Support
Doing some reading & thinking (and hopefully some writing for a booklet for churches in the LBA) about support for youth workers, both paid and volunteer.
It's summer and quiet time for blogs, but just wondering if anyone had any good stories or ideas for supporting those engaged in youth ministry. Negative stories would be quite easy to collect, but I'd like to hear some good practice ideas...

(I was hoping for a cheesy pic to go with this post, but couldn't find anything naff enough!)

Bite the Bullet
Getting ready for tomorrow's Bite the Bullet event in Wood Green. Details here.
Day time includes input from Professor John Pitts, a panel discussion, plus seminars and more.
Evening is an urban music concert.
Last year's event was fantastic, and this years looks set to once again help churches and practitioners face some of the difficult questions around youth gangs and violence.

Youth Evangelism
Tim linked to this fascinating post about is evangelism child abuse?
It raises some good questions about the ethics of our mission and work with children and young people.

He has followed up with some reflections of his own about evangelism among young people and schools work. These are key issues as we work out how to do youth ministry post-christendom. It strikes me that so much of what we do is built on assumptions of both the knowledge of those we are trying to "reach", and of our position. I wonder if even our language of "us" and "them" needs questioning, yet I am cautious of those who seem to end up with all journey and no destination!

This paper from the National Youth Agency is also helpful in terms of ethics in youth work.

Wellbeing
Another report shows UK "ranked low on youth wellbeing", compared to the rest of Europe.

The "mini sabbatical" is over...
My 1 month (ish) sabbatical is over. My dissertaion is submitted. Now I just have to see if it was any good...will probably post more on my thinking/conclusions another time.
It was nice having some clear time to put into it.
Meanwhile back to work!

On Saturday we had a "forum" day related to "Bite the Bullet", to make space to listen to young people and try and get a "top 5" issues they face, especially with violent crime as the background noise. We ended up with a top 6 issues : Consumerism & money, peer pressure, identity, fear, respect & power, the double standards of the wider (adult) world. The standard "sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll" along with gang stuff seemed to the group to be symptoms of these underlying issues. Was an interesting day!

Youthwork Conference
A week since trekking down to Eastbourne for Youthwork the Conference, with the Mrs and 2 other youth leaders from my home church. And I think it was better than expected!
My main aim was to catch up with people, which I did, but the sessions I went to were also helpful.
I appreciated the space given to worship, which hopefully was not just because this year's theme was "soul", because I know many go to these things worn out and in need of that space (and my fears that having fallen behind on the latest songs would leave me feeling left out were unfounded).
I appreciated Chris Curtis' take on the oft-preached David and Bathsheba passage and the "dark side". Gerard Kelly also said some thoughtful things in his "soul session", although I confess to skipping out before yet another look at Acts 10 and 17 around engaging culture!
Couple of quotes to ponder:
"The purpose of every culture is to receive the Holy Spirit"
"The story of the Son is the hermeneutic key to every human culture"

Those I spoke to and went with appreciated the conference too, which is good, so it helped volunteers as well as being worthwhile for an old-timer like me.
And to top it all we won the quiz at the cheesy Saturday night disco. Magic.

Another Conference
Off to Youthwork the Conference in Eastbourne later today.
Should be fun!

Christian Youthwork
I'm a bit behind on these things, but I downloaded the report, call to action and resource ideas that came out of last years FYT led "The Future of Christian Youthwork. Definitely worth a look!
The Call to Action suggests :
1) That 2009 be a year when young people are invested in, celebrated and empowered in
churches, Christian organisations and the wider community.
2) That churches and Christian organisations commit to spending at least 25% of their
income on working with young people - especially marginalized young people.
3) That Government commit to long-term funding of Christian faith-based youth work.

Quite a challenge!
Not sure about number 3 - of course I see value in it, but not sure in post-christendom we can really expect the government to fund anything but their own agendas (even though a lot of Christian youth work meets their agendas and criteria).
Points 1 and 2 are things that I will ponder on. Number 1 should go without saying, but I'm not naive enough to believe it either is happening or will happen, so welcome the call for a special effort, especially as 2009 is "Year of the Child".

For such a time as this...
Great stuff at the Bite the Bullet Conference today.
Unprecedented media coverage for a Christian event. All the major UK TV channels sent crews and reports made both local and nation news. Wow.
Lets pray for an end to the ongoing violent youth crime

Youth Crime
Seems everyone is talking about youth crime and violence again.
BBC London did a debate a couple of weeks back and had a day of programmes about teenage life in London today (which in fairness covered more than that issue).
Channel 4 has a series Disarming Britain next week.

In a couple of weeks time the Baptist Union, along with Street Pastors and others has an event called Bite the Bullet.
Happening at Brixton Baptist on 12th July there are some good, experienced people coming to speak (including Deputy Mayor Ray Lewis). The plan is it'll be more than a one off event, and hopefully make a positive impact.

Dangerous to be young in London?
All over London yesterday the Evening Standard's sellers were flanked with the headline "5 teens shot or stabbed every day". Certainly an attention grabbing headline! By the time I got the paper the lead story had changed, but inside there was a report of youth crime in the Capital. Online version here.
It reveals that:
"From 1 April to 30 November, a total of 1,273 victims under the age of 20 suffered injuries in gun and knife attacks. Many were victims of gang violence."
It is possible to dismiss the article as tabloid panic mongering but clearly there is a problem.

There is some great stuff being done to work with young people, and address these issues, at both street and strategic levels, with Christians involved at all levels. But more is clearly needed, and a fresh realisation from the middle classes that this is not just "somebody else's problem".
These are complex issues, without simple solutions.

Challenging Behaviour
Last night church.co.uk hosted Nigel's Pimlott's fantastic "challenging behaviour" training session.
Was a good session, with a decent turnout.
I've read the Grove booklet and heard the session before, but it was well received and with all these things those attending make a difference to the shape and direction.
The idea has emerged to do some more training in partnership with church.co.uk (and maybe some others), focusing on some more urban stuff, that some of the youthwork conferences don't hit (or at least not in depth).

Who should be youth leaders?
Back in June I ran an unscientific pole on "should Christian youthwork ever use non-Christian staff or volunteers?" and 75% said "yes" it was OK. That led me to think about what is the Christian in distinctive in youth work (see this post).

This issue is being discussed on some other (non-UK) youth work blogs at a far more interesting level, so I won't add anything, but suggest you check out Tim's thoughts and subsequent comments and Darren's response.

Brigades & Uniformed Youth Groups
I often get asked about Boys Brigade, Girls Brigade etc, (Scouts and the like are not so common among Baptists). The questions are often about how to close the groups without offending people who hold dear to their ideals, how to integrate them in to the wider youth work of the church and how to use them effectively.
A while ago I was sure the era of uniformed youth groups was long over and we should just kill them all off (the groups not the participants!). But every now and again I hear stories of great things happening through these groups, especially in unexpected situations or places where other forms of youthwork have failed. Plus I know the organisations themselves have made big efforts to try and bring them in to the 21st Century.
But is there a place for uniformed groups? What should we do with them? How can we use them?

Called to youth work?
I came across this post from someone thinking about how they ended up in youth work and are they called to it.
It got me thinking about a theory I had a while back. Are people called to youth ministry? Or are they called to ministry/to work with people and they chose to exercise that among young people? So you have people called to be evangelists or pastors and they could be that in a church or in another culture, but they do it among young people.
Or may be not - maybe some people are called to work with young people primarily.

A few years ago I took part in research about youthworkers and calling. Not sure what the results were. But it's an interesting question. Especially with people like me who would say they are called to help churches engage and to build church rather than called to be youthworkers. Of course there is also the issue of longevity in youth work, and the fact that so many seem to move out to other ministries (which is valid).

Talking Youth Ministry in London
Yesterday I was giving a paper at a gathering of the London Urban Theology Project. This is an interesting project set up by Steve Latham, a Baptist minister in London , where people present short papers for discussion reflecting on ministry issues in London.
Yesterday it was my turn to present, alongside a couple of others. The paper I did was called "Mind the Gap" and if you're really keen its here. Unashamedly some of the stuff is adapted from "Beyond the Youthgroup", but it also goes into the gap between outreach youthwork and work with church young people. Seemed to go down OK, although I was a little freaked when an urban youthwork veteran, Mike Eastman turned up (Mike co-authored a book with Steve on Urban Ministry a couple of years back). Anyway Mike's experience made an interesting discussion - he was telling youth work stories from way before my time (literally).

Youth Minstry and Fear
While here at Cliff I took the chance to look through some retro Youth Minstry books in the library.
Youth in the City by Peter Stow with Mike Fean was a late 80's look at "open" youth minstry and the inner cities. It's a telling book, as it seems in reality little has really changed in terms of churches really engaging with young people in our cities.
But it was this phrase the really struck me:

"A church's youth policy often exposes the fears of its members" (p40).