Young people today and their context

What is Youth Ministry?
Young people today and their context

The development
of Youth Ministry

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 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

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.

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/

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

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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

Growing after-school provision
• More and more schools offering breakfast
clubs and after-school clubs
• Connexions Service
• School – exams – more pressure

• 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

• 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’
https://www.ymca.org.uk/wp-
content/uploads/2018/04/Youth-Consequences-v0.2.pdf
explores relationship between Local Authority Expenditure
and Youth Work

Family
Technology and
communication
School
Economy
Life when we were 13...
Youth culture (music,
language, fashion,
media, ethnicity)
Appearance
Globalisation (inc.
Pandemic’s / global
health challenges…)
Times have changed...

Family
School
Technology and
communication
Economy
Life for a 13 year old in 2020
Youth culture (music,
language, fashion,
media, ethnicity)
Appearance
Globalisation inc.
Pandemic’s…
What impact does that have on our youth work
today?

What is life like for Young
People today?

Growing Up Slowly…
‘Today’s teens follow a slow life strategy, common in times
and places where families have fewer children and cultivate
each child longer and more intensely…Compare that to a fast
life strategy, where families are larger and parents focus on
subsistence rather than quality. This fast life strategy involves
less preparation for the future and more focus on just
getting through the day…’ (Jean M. Twenge 2017 p25)
Milestones of…
….marriage
….buying your first home
….having kids…
…all taking place later than they were a generation or two
ago.

Pandemics: Covid-19
UK Youth Report (April 2020) predicted the
following effects of Covid-19 on Young People:
https://www.ukyouth.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/UK-Youth-Covid-19-Impact-
Report-External-Final-08.04.20.pdf
https://www.ukyouth.org/covid-19/

Good Childhood Report
https://www.childrenssociety.org.uk/good-childhood-report-2020

Family & Friends
https://www.childrenssociety.org.uk/sites/default/files/good-childhood-report-
2020.pdf chapter 4
Significant drop in proportion of
children in England at ages 11, 13
& 15 reporting high peer support.
This downward trend of
happiness with friends has been
consistent over the last few years.

Defining a Friend: Dunbar’s Number theory
https://www.childrenssociety.org.uk/sites/default/files/good-childhood-report-
2020.pdf chapter 4
‘…it is our active investment in a
select number of ‘close friends’
that limits our own ability and
potential openness to new
friendships – an issue that
children often face when their
own friendships break down or
when moving schools.’ (p58)

Race and Diversity
https://www.redcross.org.uk/get-
involved/teaching-resources/black-lives-
matter-resources-for-young-people

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

School
• Headteacher’s Protest Oct 2018 over
school budgets
https://www.theguardian.com/education/2018/sep/28/a-complete-crisis-2000-school-leaders-rally-against-cuts
https://www.theguardian.com/education/2018/oct/23/britain-crisis-childhood-former-childrens-commissioner-al-aynsley-
green-book
https://www.childrenssociety.org.uk/good-childhood-report-2020
• Sir Al Aynsley-Green: only 10% of white
boys from the most disadvantaged
backgrounds able to progress to higher
education, while 82% of Oxbridge graduates
come from the upper and middle classes.
• Good Childhood Report: YP becoming
unhappy with school due to exam stress,
bullying and school culture; high levels of
‘fear of failure’ compared to other
countries.

Economy & Globalisation
Brexit
• Major uncertainty
• Divided country
Climate Change
• School Strikes
Globalisation
• Young People can be engaging with young
people around the world via social media and
gaming etc

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/
http://www.barnardos.org.uk/what_we_do/policy_research_unit.
htm
https://learning.nspcc.org.uk/research-resources/
https://www.ukyouth.org/covid-19/

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