All Editorial articles – Page 115
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IssuesChild poverty on the rise
The new stats mapping the levels of child poverty across the UK are shocking. If you haven’t seen them already, stop reading this and go and look at what it says about your area. The numbers, showing how many children are living in families earning less than 60 per cent of the national median income, are particularly difficult to read if you’re looking at the worst affected areas – Tower Hamlets in London, Ladywood in Birmingham or Central Manchester. But shouldn’t we be just as shocked by the nine per cent in parts of Sheffield or Aberdeen too?
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IssuesCost of child sex offences
A senior police officer recently revealed the cost of investigating child sex offences is now an astonishing £1bn a year. This figure could treble by 2020. In just three years, the number of allegations has shot up by 80 per cent and in 2015, there were 70,000 investigations. When asked why, Simon Bailey, national police lead for child protection and abuse, said the opportunities provided by the internet, with children watching pornography and thinking it is normal, is driving the sharp increase.
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IssuesCost of child sex offences
A senior police officer recently revealed the cost of investigating child sex offences is now an astonishing £1bn a year. This figure could treble by 2020. In just three years, the number of allegations has shot up by 80 per cent and in 2015, there were 70,000 investigations. When asked why, Simon Bailey, national police lead for child protection and abuse, said the opportunities provided by the internet, with children watching pornography and thinking it is normal, is driving the sharp increase.
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IssuesRaising hope for the Chibok Girls
On 14th April 2014, over 250 young women were kidnapped from their boarding school in Chibok, a province in northern Nigeria, by militant terrorist group Boko Haram. One year on, 219 young women remain missing. Just think about all the things you’ve done in the past year.
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IssuesReady-to-use Parable: The ten cheerleaders
The kingdom is like ten cheerleaders, who took their pom poms and went to support their marathon runner. They took up their position and started cheering. Five of the cheerleaders were disorganised and brought nothing to drink for the event, and the other five took some bottles of water. When the runner was delayed the cheerleaders started to get thirsty so stopped cheering so loudly.
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BlogYoung people and technology: Digital check-up for youth workers
How’s your social media life? Dr Bex Lewis asks some probing questions
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Issues
Young People more charitable than ever
A charity is hoping to reverse decades of decline in young people donating money to good causes after a survey showed that young people have a great attitude towards charity despite giving less than older people.
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IssuesReady-to-use Mentoring: The Character Pyramid
This character pyramid is a resource that could easily structure a whole term of mentoring sessions. This session just covers the basic idea.
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The Last Word: Crying (with joy) in the Chapel
It’s always me. I have the uncanny knack, in any given situation, of blundering haplessly into anecdotal territory. So if there’s an open manhole cover, a banana skin or a social time-bomb nearby, I’m inevitably your man. I appear to be magnetically attracted to such things.
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IssuesReady-to-use Mentoring: YouTube Channels
YouTube channels are big business these days – teenagers are earning millions of pounds, getting millions of views each month and often making careers out of it. Of course, the majority of teenagers are consumers, spending hours watching this content. Yes, this can be unhealthy, but it can also be educational and it can actually raise aspirations in young people who might otherwise not have aspirations.
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IssuesThe Last Word: How I changed my mind
I had convinced myself that I was speaking the truth; whether it was spoken ‘in love’ or not, speaking the truth was the thing leaders were supposed to do. But the young woman in my office started crying, and something tipped sideways in my self-analysis.
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BlogHow a mission week changed my life
Is short-term mission really worth the effort? Do mission weeks accomplish what they set out to do? XLP’s CEO Patrick Regan shares his thoughts
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IssuesThe training course that changed my life
Anyone who has been through children’s ministry training knows that it provides a solid grounding for full-time children’s work. Courses provide students with new ideas, practical skills and helpful guidance, as well as a strong theological foundation. But training in this area offers much, much more than this. As well as acquiring knowledge, there is often a learning of habits, a changing of perspectives and even a transformation of character. The courses’ application to both head and heart helps to set children’s workers up, not only for their work, but for life. Even those who decide not to go into full-time children’s ministry find the training incredibly helpful. Former and current children’s workers across the country got in touch to share their experiences.
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IssuesHow a Residential Changed My Life
Taking your youth group away can feel harder than an expedition to Mars. But it’s worth it. We hear from five young people whose lives were changed dramatically on a trip with their youth group.
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Faith at homePeriods of change
Change is a constant part of our lives - new school, new church, new baby, new step-parent, new church group, even new shoes! This autumn, we moved house from the country farm house where my children were born to a house on a street in a villagey-suburb. I knew it would be a big change for us all, and especially for the children who hadn’t really chosen the change, which makes things harder. I wanted to find ways to help make it as smooth as possible, but when I searched for things to help our family transition well, I found surprisingly few resources. I’m not a transition expert, but I thought it might be helpful to share some of the things I found and some I used to help us make this big move. I hope they inspire you that change can be done well and can be faith enhancing.
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IssuesKnife Crime: A change in culture
On the 14th September, more than 100 young people marched from the Aylesbury estate in Southwark to Steedman Street, where their friend, Mohammed ‘Moe’ Dura-Ray, was murdered. Flowers were laid, candles lit and prayers said close to the murder scene. Moe is not the first young person I know who has been stabbed and killed on the Aylesbury estate, nor was this the first time Moe had been stabbed
