Every child matters

Every Christian schools worker I’ve ever met loves the job. What is there to not like?

Jeans and trainers are the standard uniform. Young people love us because, at any given time, the odds are good that we’re carrying chocolate. And we get to spend hours each week playing games. But, as with any work, there are stressful moments. Here’s a taster of a typical week:

8.51 am, Monday:
Standing alone at the front of a chilly hall, surveying the unsmiling faces of 1,000 teenagers who are waiting for you to deliver an assembly on the assigned theme of ‘discipline’.

12.45 pm, Wednesday:
Navigating corridors heaving with hormones, cliques and bullies during a lunch break, trying to bribe pupils to answer survey questions about Christianity.

1.40 pm, Friday:
Teaching a lesson in the graveyard slot, to a group of Year 11s who don’t know you from Adam (turns out they don’t know much about him or Eve either), with a PowerPoint that has mysteriously malfunctioned and left you with no visual aids.

There’s never a dull moment — and there are plenty of scary ones. But all of these times are chances to talk to students about Jesus, and this is the real reason Christian schools workers are happy to go to work in the morning. Considering the need, there couldn’t be a better time for action.

Meeting big challenges

Finding legitimate ways to tell young people in schools about the gospel isn’t easy. First, there are the challenges of nurturing relationships with the schools themselves. We have a healthy respect for the privilege of being invited inside; many schools are virtually closed to Christian visitors. Hours of prayer and planning go into each assembly and RE lesson; we seek to serve the school’s needs but also to gently push pupils to examine the basis for their beliefs. Then there are government standards, requiring us to stretch the gifted and support those with learning difficulties. Add in conversations with deputy heads who will run a mile at any whiff of ‘fundamentalism’ and it’s clear that schools workers need to be as ‘shrewd as snakes and as innocent as doves’ (Matthew 10.16).

Next, there are the challenges of developing relationships with pupils. Schools workers are seen as alien beings defying teens’ penchant for quick labels. Are we teachers? Vicars? Friends? They often don’t know how to relate to us, so discipline at a club can be a struggle, as we invite students in for doughnuts and games, but also ask for respectful listening and participation during the ‘Bible bit’.

Youngsters also come to clubs on a notoriously fickle basis. Next week, Beth may be dragged away by a new boyfriend and Rob may find Robot Club more tantalising. In fact, studies show that youngsters in the UK find just about anything more interesting than Jesus. One survey of young people’s perceptions of Christianity concluded, ‘The best way of summing it up is “pallid respect”. They thought [Jesus] was important but he didn’t excite them’.¹

Facing a bigger need

Growing relationships with schools and young people is a daunting task, but the need for schools work is too compelling to ignore. Research on Christianity in the UK comes back time and again with the same answer: however you do it, reach people when they’re young. Peter Brierley’s Reaching and Keeping Tweenagers shows how the church has haemorrhaged youngsters at an alarming rate in recent years; children often leave the church around the time they finish primary school². However, this is also the age when they’re most open to the gospel. Paul Barna’s research in the US shows that almost half the people who come to faith do so before they turn 13³.

The question is, how can we reach young people when most have no contact with church or even casual conversations about faith? Another study found ‘few outlets... for young people to talk about their faith. Almost half of young people do not talk about religious or faith issues at all’⁴. For the typical teenager, Jesus just doesn’t register on the radar.

Hearing about Jesus

So, like it or not, we must admit that many young people will only hear about Jesus in schools. However, religious education lessons and assemblies are often wasted opportunities. RE lessons may tick the curricular boxes rather than challenging students’ beliefs. Ofsted found that, in many RE classrooms, the instruction produces ‘mechanistic responses’ in pupils; only four in ten schools are considered good or better in this subject⁵. Assemblies, on the other hand, rarely stray beyond watered-down moralising. Most assemblies offer bland stories about friendship or exhortations to buy Fairtrade. There are some positive messages, but young people aren’t hearing about crucial Christian beliefs.

The result is staggering ignorance of the basics of Christianity. According to a study at the University of Exeter, students ‘are confused about almost every aspect of [Jesus’s] life and mission’. Surveys showed that ‘even if teachers had spent a whole term looking at the Resurrection… the majority of pupils still did not understand it’⁶. I’ve seen examples of this confusion first-hand. A local church school invited me in to teach a lesson responding to one class’s refusal to believe Jesus even existed; many of the Year 10s were more willing to believe Dan Brown (author of The Da Vinci Code) than the Bible. And yet this was a school giving its pupils lots of ‘traditional’ Christian content. Clearly there was something missing.

Changed lives

The challenges and the need are huge, and this is where Christian schools workers have a vital role to play. Organisations like CrossTeach see schools work as a long-term commitment to schools and individuals, founded on a close partnership with local churches. We love bringing the gospel to students, but we know that their faith will only mature as they get stuck in at a church. Getting to that point is often a long journey.

First contact

Contact with a school usually begins with an assembly to get students thinking, leaving them with an invitation to check out the Christian lunch club. Though it feels like a modest start, simply sharing one or two verses of scripture is a chance to see the God of the universe at work in a school hall. I’m awed to remember that a few words from the Bible have far more power than anything else these young people will hear all day.

Nitty-gritty

But the real nitty-gritty starts with RE lessons. CrossTeach workers are experienced teachers who offer RE departments fun and interactive lessons taught from an openly Christian perspective. We find that schools welcome the ‘enrichment’, and young people enjoy asking us questions. During lessons on controversial topics like abortion, pupils almost always ask ‘What do you believe?’ They’re surprised to discover that people live their lives according to what the Bible says. Chats over worksheets and group activities can lead to thoughtful sharing and growing trust.

These small beginnings can get young people thinking, but the goal is for them to feel interested and comfortable enough to poke their heads into one of our clubs. This is the heart of the work, where we teach them from the Bible and develop friendships that may lead to a relationship with Jesus. Rob, our national director, relates the story of one boy in Leamington who showed up at a club after CrossTeach RE lessons piqued his interest. He came along faithfully for ages, then finally accepted a visiting youth worker’s invitation to a church youth group. After months of involvement at church, he went to a summer camp and made a commitment to the Lord. All in all, the journey took three years of prayer and friendship.

Frustrations

These are the encouragements that keep schools workers going. Many weeks are filled with the frustrations of last-minute room changes, techno-disasters, and jokers who show up at a club to grab some cookies and run. But God is working. And what a privilege it is to know that sharing a parable during an assembly or opening up the Bible with three teenagers at lunchtime are means of bringing God’s truth into young lives. It can be discouraging to see the many influences vying for the hearts and minds of students. But none of these factors can compare with the life-changing power of God’s word and Spirit.

If you’re interested in learning more about the work of CrossTeach, please visit our website: http://www.crossteach.com.

1 Gledhill, Ruth. ‘God? He was a dad to Jesus, wasn’t he?’ The Times, September 30 2006.
2 Brierley, Peter. Reaching and Keeping Tweenagers. London: Christian Research, 2002
3 Evangelism Is Most Effective Among Kids. The Barna Update, The Barna Group, October 11 2004, http://www.barna.org.
4 Beatbullying Interfaith Report. November 2008. Beatbullying/BBInterfaith. www.beatbullying.org
5 Making sense of religion. June 2007. Ofsted, http://www.ofsted.gov.uk
6 Gledhill — ibid.

The challenge of and need for Christians to do schools work