Gaines without pains

A much-loved Christian centre, which might have closed after 40 years of youth ministry, has received a reprieve and is now set to host a number of exciting new gospel opportunities.

The Gaines Christian Youth Centre, near Worcester, had been used as a young people’s venue since the 1960s, when it was acquired by the Andrew League Trust (ALT), who needed a year-round base for their work.

The Centre was used for several summer camps and as a residential house for church groups, but closed two years ago and seemed destined to be sold.

Keep it open

So, when Jeremy Smith, a veteran of CPAS camps at Gaines and with a passion for youth ministry, heard the Centre was up for grabs, he hatched a plan to keep it open. The former City banker, based at Emmanuel Church in Wimbledon, South West London, explained why he was so keen to save it. He said: ‘I thought it would be tragic if Gaines closed, as already many evangelical camps in the UK are struggling with the loss of venues. As evangelicals we’re trying to promote and plant camps, but every summer it’s becoming harder and harder to find places for them. There’s also a threat from secular camps and language schools which are competing for venues and taking many of our sites. When I heard that the fabulous site at Gaines was potentially going to be sold as a nursing home or whatever, I really wanted to do something.’

Astonishing

Jeremy asked the ALT for first refusal on the site and some time to try and get a plan together to raise the £3 million needed to buy it. He met the Trust and gave them his ideas for the Centre’s future, and it soon became clear the two groups had a shared vision.

He said: ‘We set out a ministry plan of how we would run Gaines and, by God’s grace, what we would hope to achieve. The astonishing thing was that the owners came back to us and said the vision we had set out was exactly what they had wanted for the Centre back in the 1960s — something overtly evangelical had been lost over the years. They then said we could have the Centre and come in and run it.

‘We now have a formal agreement to bring it back to life with an evangelistic ministry aimed at young people, initially in the West Midlands and then beyond, and amazingly we don’t need to raise the millions to buy the place, we’ve just been given the keys.’

Camp XL

Prior to gaining the site Jeremy had formed Camp XL, which he hoped would promote evangelical camps and help safeguard the venue at Gaines. The camps are different from previous ones, as they introduce a number of specialist holidays onto the UK market.

‘I wanted to promote evangelical camps that would complement the existing ones by being overtly evangelistic, while at the same time having a unique activity focus to compete with secular camps’, Jeremy explained.

‘These might be camps for teenagers who love performing arts or football, and currently go off for a week on a camp run by StageCoach or Manchester United.’ Last year Camp XL ran a performing arts camp called Showtime, which will run again this year, and will launch Sportzone for 11-to-15-year-olds who are mad about sport.

How about you?

Youngsters will get high-class coaching from Christians in these fields, and will open the Bible together. However, the vision for the future of Gaines is broader than just the camps. Jeremy explained that when the summer camps are over the plan is to train up future youth workers for full-time ministry.

He said: ‘We aim to put in a team of three or four to oversee the Centre and a team of 12-15 people, who are likely to be gap year or postgraduate students considering going into full-time ministry and youth work, to staff it.

‘We’re saying, why don’t you consider coming to us where you can learn to handle the Bible correctly and have the opportunity to put it all into practice with young people right here on site.’

The project is being backed by the Cornhill Training Programme, and there are many opportunities right on the doorstep. Jeremy said: ‘Having the team on site just 40 minutes from Birmingham, and ten minutes from the M5 corridor, we can also partner and support a number of local churches who may otherwise lack leaders and resources. We can also go to local schools and help with Christian Unions, and run mini-camps at Gaines at weekends, with programmes devised and managed by our team.’

Gospel and Bible

Jeremy hopes the new programme at Gaines will be similar to the work already going on at The Oakes in Sheffield, where youth groups hear the gospel as staff are trained up for long term ministry.

He stressed:’We’re about teaching the gospel and opening the Bible, we want to be a base for evangelism not just a conference centre.

‘We’ve seen that this model works already at The Oakes.

‘They’ve been so successful and we’d love to see if we could produce something similar, with God’s help, in a different part of the country.’

Ed Beavan

If you would like to get involved or support the work of this ministry, please contact Jeremy via www.campxl.org