Behind the scenes with our youth workers

Picture the scene...a youth worker goes to speak with a young person sitting on a church pew. The conversation between the two ranges from praying, and how the young person often prays about the situations they are facing, to an incident that happened a year ago that made them think a bit more about life.  This might sound like a fairly normal conversation that youth workers have with their young people, but let me tell you it from another angle. 

The youth worker doesn't work for that church but works for a Charity, who have just borrowed the use of the church kitchen. The young person hardly ever sets foot in a church and only a few weeks ago was on the front page of the local newspapers for assaulting someone. These conversations are far from normal and are amazing when they happen.

The charity involved is Didcot TRAIN Youth Project (TRAIN stands for To Reach out  And INteract with young people). The Churches Together in Didcot set it up 4 years ago primarily to do detached youth work (detached means going to where young people are - on the streets, parks and wherever). It seeks to build relationships, offer support, promote constructive activities with the young people and where appropriate, share the Gospel. If you think about Jesus and his ministry, that's basically how we do our work - out there where the (young) people are.

After a period of working with a group of young people on an estate in Didcot in February this year, we ran a project that got them to clean up the estate they hang out on. In return, we took them away on a three-day
residential to build their self-esteem, promote teamwork and other positive activities for them. The young people did a feedback session on this residential which is why we ended up in a church, as there was nowhere else for us to meet. The young person had stayed behind because he was worried about his court case coming up and so started to pray on his own.

Possibly when you read the above story you thought it was a Christian young person but the reality was that itdescribed a young person that the media had labelled a yob.

The challenge is that people face difficult issues and life problems all the time - some in desperate times will pray. If you seek to reach people and get alongside them, they might already be engaging with God or at least asking questions about God. Only yesterday in our work on the streets a young person asked the question "I believe in God, but don't understand why he allows someone to murder someone".

If you are willing to take the time to get alongside young people they are still asking questions, maybe not all the time, but if you get alongside them and are prepared to listen you might just be surprised about what they think or know about God.