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Monthly youth leaders column

Beyond the fringe

Much of our energy in youth groups is centred on keeping our weekly meetings well organised and doing our best to maintain good teaching to our young people. If that’s so, great — keep it up.

But I wonder if it’s possible for our groups to become so insular that we lose the perspective of what is happening in our world. How often do we mention world mission in our group meetings and should we anyway? Is it wise to give our young people insight into a world that is beyond their everyday existence?

Global church

World mission is sometimes regarded as being the passion for a small minority in church life. It has often been a struggle to get adults motivated by the need for local and global mission. My experience would suggest that exposing young people to another culture changes their attitude to so many things. Because there is a global church spread across the planet, young people need to hear about what is happening and how they can be involved. It may be difficult to organise but well worth the effort.

Getting involved

My first visit to Romania was in 1991 soon after the fall of the Communist regime. Everybody said it would be difficult, and it was. On that first visit to a Baptist church, four of the party of six were under 22 and were amazed at what they saw and experienced. Here was poverty on a scale they had never seen, with most of the shelves in the shops empty and the churches very widely scattered, which meant that local people took many hours to get to their nearest church. When we returned home the youth group were quite surprised by what these young students were reporting. This led to young people visiting the country and deciding they would raise part of the pastor’s salary. We tried to make sure that this money was from their allowances not simply given by their parents. Since that time several young people have visited the country and helped staff summer camps for Romanian children.

Do what you can

It may be that all you can manage is the sponsorship of one child in another culture or make an occasional connection with a missionary based at your church. Perhaps some of the group could set up a regular correspondence with someone working in a mission setting and get the group to send some things which will help the worker to be more effective. Partnership between a local church and a mission setting seems to be the way many are operating today and I see no reason why young people should not be involved. Recently the children in our Sunday School sent Christmas cards (by name) to the children in a Romanian Sunday School.

Major projects may be beyond what you feel you can do but I would love to see every youth group in the UK have some connection with a missionary initiative and at a very practical down-to-earth level.

Engage with mission

Alongside missiological teaching, I would hope to see young people engage with mission. It often stimulates them to think about mission in their own culture, but the broadening of their outlook is very healthy. In a year where we could easily become overwhelmed by our own economic plight, it is vital that young people see beyond this to a world where credit crunch victims are suffering a great deal more than us and to learn that to whom much is given much is expected.

Next month we’ll look at a few more practical ideas.

Dave Fenton

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