2. Learning outcomes
1a What is Youth Ministry? – Young people
today and their context
– The Development of Youth Ministry
– Lunch
– Young People today & their context
– A Church-Wide Responsibility
– Ministry with young people
4. BEFORE THE GREAT AWAKENING
• Slave trading – 46,000 in one year (1750)
• Corrupt commerce
• Inhuman punishment – 160 capital offences
• Prisons – hell on earth
• Children - mortality was about 74%
• Alcohol – in 1751 11 million gallons of gin
• Gambling – huge sums bet and lost
• Cruel sports - commonplace cruelty
What is Youth Ministry?
5. WHAT HAPPENED?
John Wesley
He preached 42,000 sermons, set up free
pharmacies, schools, pleaded for tolerance,
freedom, social justice. He rode up and down
the country preaching any where he could
get a hearing. He left 150,000 followers
drawn into self organised groups.
He taught God loved the poorest, meanest,
most impoverished. The last, the lost and
least. He and his followers brought a moral
revolution through personal spiritual
transformation
What is Youth Ministry?
6. TRANSACTIONAL TO
TRANSFORMATIONAL
• Religion as transactions is about gaining some
kind of satisfaction from enacting or
participating in religious ceremonies.
• Religion as transformation is consciously
looking for profound changes, for discernible
growth, for the unexpected.
What is Youth Ministry?
7. Sunday School Movement – 1780’s
• Pioneers: Robert Raikes and Hannah More
• Responded to the need around them and their
Christian conviction
• Informal ways of working: Day trips / sports teams
• Some schemes flowed from very conservative views,
others sought radical social change. As a result, there
were some tensions and conflicts between different
groupings.
Links: http://infed.org/mobi/hannah-more-sunday-schools-education-and-youth-work/
What is Youth Ministry?
8. The Youth Club...
• Rev Arthur Sweatman – 1850’s
• 1875 – Anglican Girls Friendly Society –
purpose was to ‘unite girls and women in a
fellowship of prayer, service and purity of life,
for the glory of God’.
• 1885 – 821 branches in England and Wales
What is Youth Ministry?
9. Uniformed Organisations –
Boys Brigade
Set up by William Smith, starting in Glasgow. He
wrote:
• ‘By associating Christianity with all that was
most noble and manly in a boy’s sight, we would
be going a long way to disabuse his mind of the
idea that there is anything effeminate or weak
about Christianity’.
• Around 800 groups by the end of the 19th
century
What is Youth Ministry?
10. Scouting...
• The emphasis on drill,
evangelicalism and
regimentation in the Boys'
Brigade worried a number of
commentators, inc. Robert
Baden-Powell
• Concerned about both physical
and mental well-being of young
people.
What is Youth Ministry?
12. Questions
• Is our youth work in response to the needs
around us, our Christian faith or both? Why?
• Are there conflicts / tensions within our
churches concerning the focus and delivery of
our youth work? If so, what are they?
What is Youth Ministry
13. World Wars
• Following 1st World War, stuttering towards
state funded youth work
• Onset of the 2nd World War saw the start of a
organised response to issues arising with and
for young people.
• ‘Open’ youth clubs and ‘detached’ youth work.
What is Youth Ministry
14. Albemarle Report – 1960
• Heralded the heyday of the large youth club or
youth centre
• Declared that the primary aim of the youth
service should be association, training and
challenge.
What is Youth Ministry
15. Youth work provision decline
• 1980’s onwards – number of young people in
youth centres started to slowly decline
• Growing competition from entertainment at
home and other leisure activities
What is Youth Ministry
16. Growing after-school provision
• More and more schools offering breakfast
clubs and after-school clubs
• Connexions Service
• School – exams – more pressure
• Playgroups Nursery
What is Youth Ministry
17. • Christian specific youth work degrees
• Rapid rise of paid Church based youth workers
• Evidence that this has slowed the number of
young people leaving Church, but not
reversed it yet
Professionalised Christian Youth Work
What is Youth Ministry
18. • Local Authorities cut expenditure on youth services
by more than 750million between 2011 & 2017
• Rise of NCS
• Less full time paid Church youth work posts
• Focus returning to the Lay Workers
• Aurora developed in response to this context
Youth Work ‘Crisis’
What is Youth Ministry
https://www.ymca.org.uk/wp-
content/uploads/2018/04/Youth-Consequences-v0.2.pdf
explores relationship between Local Authority Expenditure
and Youth Work
19. Covid-19
What is Youth Ministry
What has been your experiences
of the impact of Covid-19 on your
Youth Ministry?
25. Good Childhood Report
The Good Childhood Report 2021 | The Children's Society
(childrenssociety.org.uk)
• 306,000 10-15 year olds
in the UK are unhappy
with their lives
• Roughly 250,000
children did not cope
well with changes
during the pandemic
• Young People are
particularly unhappy
about school and
appearance
26. Appearance
• 75% said they cared what people think
about the way they look, trying to match up
to the ideals that are placed on them.
• Nearly three quarters of 17 to 24 year-olds
(72%) often worry about the way they look,
compared to less than three fifths of those
aged 11 to 16 (59%).
• These worries go beyond the narrow
concerns of shape and size that are
traditionally presented. Instead, for the
majority of young people, an importance is
placed on the wider
https://www.ymca.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/The-Curate-Escape-v2.0.pdf
www.berealcampaign.co.uk
27. Economy & Globalisation
Brexit
• Major uncertainty
• Divided country
Climate Change
• Now feeling the effects here in the West (whilst
much worse in the developing world)
• Young People at the fore of protests
Cost of Living Crisis
• What's our response as the Church?
• How can we offer real meaningful support?
28. Other research papers available:
https://www.ymca.org.uk/about/what-we-
do/campaigning/research
https://www.actionforchildren.org.uk/what-we-do/policy-and-
research/policy-and-research-publications/
Reports | Barnardo's (barnardos.org.uk)
NSPCC research and resources | NSPCC Learning
30. How do you rate these statements – true or false…
· My church love young people
· My church pray for the young people
· There are always enough volunteers to work with the young people
· The young people feel an important part of the church
· The adults in the church generally know the names of the young people
· I am given opportunities to share what is going on with the youth work in church
· The church provide a budget for the youth work
· The whole of my church is nurturing the young people
· The church leadership are interested and connected to the youth work
· The young people are regularly involved in the life and services of the church
31. 1a Youth ministry
Genesis 18:19
“For I have chosen him, that he may
command his children and his household
after him to keep the way of the LORD by
doing righteousness and justice, so that
the LORD may bring to Abraham what he
has promised him.”
32. 1a Youth ministry
Deuteronomy 6:6-7
And these words that I command you
today shall be on your heart. You shall
teach them diligently to your children, and
shall talk of them when you sit in your
house, and when you walk by the way,
and when you lie down, and when you
rise.
33. 1a Youth ministry
Ephesians 6:4
Fathers, do not provoke your children to
anger, but bring them up in the discipline
and instruction of the Lord.
34. 1a Youth ministry
Matthew 19:13-15
Then children were brought to him that he
might lay his hands on them and pray. The
disciples rebuked the people, but Jesus
said, “Let the little children come to me
and do not hinder them, for to such
belongs the kingdom of heaven.” And he
laid his hands on them and went away.
36. It should be a Church Wide
Responsibility...
- Praying...for the young people; youth leaders; around exam time
- Baking cakes
- Sharing stories from their teenage years...especially if they're up for
sharing a dodgy story or two...
- Retired teachers helping with SATS / GCSE / A-level revision
- Taking leaders out for coffee
37. 1a Youth ministry
What is ministry with Young
People?
‘Being open to learn from another person (even a
child) as well as to share one’s understandings
and ways’.
Westerhoff, Will our children have faith.
38. 1a Youth ministry
• Live with others – best education (informal)
• It is easier to impose than to reflect...and yet...
• Easier to instruct, than share...and yet...
• Easier to act than to interact...and yet...
What do young people have to offer
us? (Westerhoff)
40. 1a Youth ministry
Ministry With Young People
Which elements of your ministry feel like ministry “with” Young People?
Are there any parts that feel like ministry “for” or “to” Young People?
Thinking about all this…are there any things you’d like to change, or to
start doing?
Further reading: 3 chapters in the related files folder for 17th September: Will
our children have faith (Westerhoff), Faith Generation (Shepherd) and Faith Forw
ard (Csinos)
41. 1a Youth ministry
Acts 16:31
Mark 9:36-37
Deuteronomy 6:6-9
Luke 9:46-48
Mark 10: 13-15
Matthew 18:2-5
Matthew 21:14-16
Matthew 11:25
Mark 5:39-42
1 Samuel 3:1-10
1 Samuel 17:41-50
Editor's Notes
Put in more detail
Youth work is quite a fluid things because we as youth workers define, interpret and develop it. It isn’t formed out of a vacuum; it is developed in a given context and practice.
Is our youth work a response to the social and spiritual needs that we encounter? Or is it a response to what is expected of us? Those conflicts / tensions still exist today as well – e.g. Caron & Sonia (YMCA) – very different understandings of what youth work is and very different contexts of youth work practice. Is there conflicts / tensions within our youth work teams or within our Churches? If so, who are those conflicts / tensions between and why do you think they’re there?
