Our Youth Mission Enablers, James and Ryan, joined the Thrive staff team in September’21. Since that time, we have been purposefully trying to get alongside churches across the area to help them start new initiatives to connect and reach young people in their community.
Fiona, our Children’s Ministry Adviser, has been doing this in regard to primary school aged children, as well as helping churches to launch new Messy Church events.
2022 was definitely a very busy year for the team but are we making a difference to the churches we serve and, most importantly, the children and young people that live in their local communities?
It is a very good question, and one that is not very easy to answer. How do you measure this kind of difference? What might this look like? What measures can you take that are helpful and tell the true story? This is a focus for us in 2023, as we want to be making a difference for God’s kingdom, not merely keeping busy.
At our first staff team meeting of the year, we spent time counting up how many new church initiatives had started in the last year, which were specifically down to Thrive’s support for a church. We were careful to not include anything that would have happened anyway, even if Thrive had not been partnering with the church, and we didn’t count any existing projects that Thrive has been invited in to help strengthen. We wanted to count only the new initiatives.
We counted 18.
18 new projects, events or activities that churches have been able to set up and deliver as a direct result of having some input, guidance and hands-on help from a member of Thrive’s team. We estimate that these 18 projects will have helped the Church across Warwickshire and Coventry to make new contact with over 320 children and young people, that they might not have had contact with otherwise.
Now the reality is that some of these projects have not taken root, yet. Some need to be changed, enhanced or aborted in order to let another initiative take over. Youth work is never straightforward, and so we are unlikely to get it perfect first time. If it was easy, there would not be an issue with churches doing youth work and we would see an abundance of teenagers in our churches already. But these projects have enabled churches to make connection with those they wouldn’t have otherwise.
We have seen churches that haven’t done youthwork for 20+ years, having the courage to take steps towards the young people who walk through their churchyard, attend a church primary school or live near them.
These are first steps. What will the next steps be?
We are seeing Christians getting bolder in their conversations, growing in confidence and praying for those they encounter.
Will you join us in praying for these next steps, and that these new initiatives will be just the beginning of seeing churches in our area growing in greater confidence in reaching out to children and young people, and sharing the love of Jesus with them?