This is exam season for many of the young people in our communities and families. We hope they have grown intellectually to this point.

We recognize that as they grow up intellectually, they also grow physically – my eldest son can now almost look me in the eye, and emotionally – from learning how to say ‘no’ as toddlers to negotiating relationships as teenagers. And as they have grown in these ways we pray that they have also grown spiritually. Faith starts with the stories learned as a child as a member of a Christian community, and develops into the testing questions of the teenage years, as they apply the analytical skills gained at school to their faith. Young people need communities of peers to which they can belong in order to relearn the stories and to rediscover how to worship from their own new perspective. And they need safe places to explore their faith critically, to take the risk of questioning, as they become more aware of our world and of themselves within it. To end up with a faith that has grown up with them.

Because we are concerned about this across the Lordsbridge Team, we are exploring how to re-energise our youthwork, to make it more coherent, and to enable the young people in all our villages to engage with others of their own age and stage. We would like to work separately with top primary/early secondary and older secondary, perhaps even sixth form. We would like a local youth coordinator in each village to organize transport and to make sure all the young people with whom we are in contact know what’s on where. And we need more youthwork helpers - to lead groups and events, and to help out generally. We can do more – with more young people and more resources – if we work across the patch.

If you are a parent, someone with ideas and enthusiasm or, particularly, someone who can actively help or pray about youth work, then please join us at an open meeting to talk about what we – Lordsbridge Team churches - can do together. 5 July, 8pm, Toft Methodist Church.

Alison Myers

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