PT: HOW DID YOU COME UP WITH THE IDEA OF PAYING YOUNG PEOPLE TO COME TO CHURCH?
SS: I’ve been doing youth work for about 20 years now and I’d come across two big issues in the first few years of the job. I was doing work in schools and with the lunch time groups I was running, and was finding that it was quite easy to actually see some of the young people come to faith and believe that there was a God. But, the challenge was that they would never then get along to church. There was a real barrier.
The second big thing was that we were running after-school groups as a follow up to the lunch time groups, and we found that up to the age of 13 and 14, people would come along and it was no trouble at all. But at the age of 15 we would suddenly lose everybody and often it would be because they’d have a part-time job. So, there were these two issues and I guess I decided, if you can’t beat them, join them! So we made the decision to try and employ some of these young people to see if we could actually get them along to church as a result.
I tried employing them to help with admin, to help set up the services, to serve coffee and so forth. Initially I was very reluctant to pay them to come to the services, but what we found was they would then quite happily come along and set the service up, but they would then disappear to go home and get tea while the service was running, coming back at the end of the service to clear up. It wasn’t working. We eventually decided that we were going to have to bite the bullet and start paying them to sing in the music group, operate the laptops and so forth - and that finally worked! It seemed to overcome the two things, and it also meant they invited their friends along because their friends were also looking for jobs. So it proved to be an effective sort of outreach tool as well.
PT: HOW DID THIS DECISION GO DOWN WITH THE REST OF THE CHURCH?
SS: The church situation is a fairly unusual one to do youth work in. It’s a very small Methodist church, predominantly made up of older people, and until recently there have only been three or four of us still working, as everybody else was retired. So it’s fair to say that the church is desperate for young people. We had no young people for quite a long period of time. There was a fair degree of scepticism and uncertainty initially, but actually it has been very positive. Although they view it as a slightly strange way of doing things, they’ve been very supportive of the result.
PT: AM I RIGHT IN THINKING THAT YOU PAY THESE YOUNG PEOPLE OUT OF YOUR OWN POCKET?
SS: Yes. It was something that I’d never tried before and I didn’t know if anyone else had tried it either, so I didn’t think it was fair to ask the church for an extra £1000 a year to experiment with. If it was worth doing and if it was actually going to work then I wanted to put my own backing behind it. It costs about £1,500 a year for, on average, ten young people to come along to church once a fortnight. We have a fortnightly youth service and that’s the bit we pay. I wouldn’t have said it’s a huge sacrifice for me. The proportion that I give towards this particular scheme is fairly small compared to the rest of my giving and the rest of the funding of the youth work. Personally I have a fairly easy lifestyle: I’m single and I don’t have a huge quantity of responsibilities and so I do have a reasonable level of spare cash.
PT: ARE YOU A VOLUNTEER?
SS: It’s a complex situation. I started off as a full-time employed youth worker, but came to the end of a contract about eight years ago and I didn’t want to leave the youth work half done. I decided to stay and maintain the contact, but it wasn’t paid. I have a few supporters who have supported me ever since I first set out. Most of the funding these days comes in through tutoring Maths, Physics and Chemistry. It provides enough money to keep things going and to finance the youth work. It also means I have enough time to do the youth work itself.
PT: SOME PEOPLE MIGHT SAY THAT YOUNG PEOPLE SHOULD COME TO CHURCH BECAUSE THEY WANT TO, NOT BECAUSE THEY’RE PAID. WHAT WOULD YOU SAY TO THAT?
SS: I fully understand and in many ways agree with that! This is not something that I did because I felt that this was ideal solution. This was something I did reluctantly, because I’d tried everything else I could think of to get young people to church. I would put my hands up and say that this is not the ideal solution.
In terms of the theology behind it, of course I would love these young people to come along purely out of love for God and I hope ultimately that will be where they end up. I hope that this is just a transition period to give them that initial impetus. There is a biblical precedent for it though - ‘A worker deserves their keep’ and ‘Do not muzzle the ox while it’s treading grain.’ The young people are doing something useful. It’s not as though we are literally just paying them to come along to church and hear about God. They are doing tasks which actually then free up time for me. If they are running the lap top that’s one less thing that I have to worry about and if they are singing in the music group then I don’t have to put so much effort into organising the worship. There is a very useful and a very practical input from them.
PT: SO YOU’RE TRYING TO BRIDGE THE GAP AND MAKE THAT INITIAL STEP A BIT EASIER?
SS: Yes, that’s right. This is very much something that I see working in this particular situation and this particular church set up. How well it would work in wider youth work and in different situations I’m much less sure. I imagine that if you've got a big and successful youth work then this isn't the ideal course of action for you. But for smaller churches and ones that are primarily working with the un-churched in an evangelistic role, I think it really does have something to offer. We’re probably the smallest church in the town. Primarily at the moment I’m seeing it as an outreach tool and I’d probably describe it as the most cost effective evangelism that I've come across. Compared to the other things that I've put money into, it’s born a lot more fruit per pound.
I've tried the full-time youth worker thing, and it just doesn't work as well as this does. This is the most cost effective way of doing youth ministry
PT: SOME PEOPLE MIGHT ASK WHY YOU DON’T USE THIS MONEY TO EMPLOY A YOUTH WORKER OR USE THE MONEY TO EMPLOY YOURSELF?
SS: It’s a horribly practical reason but as I said, it is the most cost effective method I’ve ever come across. There’s no way that I could individually employ a youth worker. For the same cost as employing a youth worker you could get 200 young people potentially attending church every Sunday. I would be very impressed with a youth worker if they managed to get 200 young people along to our church on a Sunday. So, every time we get a takeaway to encourage the young people to come to a Bible study, I’m actually thinking, ‘I could employ an extra young person to come to church for three months for the same price, and we’re only getting three or four people tonight’. We did a trip to Soul Survivor and only two young people came along. The money that we spent on that trip could have employed seven people for the entire year to come to church. I’ve tried the full-time youth worker thing, and it just didn’t work as well as this does.
PT: DO YOU THINK THERE’S A DANGER THAT WE CAN GET TOO FOCUSED ON OUTWARD GROWTH, AS OPPOSED TO DEPTH OF GROWTH, PERSONAL COMMITMENT AND PASSION? IS IT BETTER TO HAVE 200 YOUNG PEOPLE IN CHURCH WHO ARE PAID TO BE THERE OR ONE YOUNG PERSON WHO WANTS TO BE THERE?
SS: Yes. And that’s something that I will hold my hands up and say is something we’re still working on. It’s certainly the case that these young people don’t end up as ‘discipled’ as I would like them to be, nor as committed. And yes, it would be fantastic to see on fire young people as a result. We had one guy head off to Bible College who came to faith through some of the schools work we were doing. And this project helped him along on that step. His family were really against him going to church; they forbade him and told him that he wasn’t allowed to go. By offering him a job, it brought the family on board and they felt that it was good for his personal development and responsibility. It is an issue of trying to weigh up whether it’s better to have more people with slight commitments or a few people with really great commitments. It’s a balance that I’m still working on and I still don’t have a full answer to. For me, it’s not a case of bums on seats in church, but it is a case of bums on seats in heaven.
