St Laurence has stood for nearly 900 years as a place of worship in the centre of Reading. In 2001, this legacy of worship continued but in a slightly different vein when Canon Rev Chris Russell and his team came to inhabit St Laurence.
They came with the mission of ‘living to see non-churched young people come to faith and create new forms of church with them’. I heard about this exciting church through a friend and started coming along 12 years ago. Four years later, I had the amazing opportunity to lead the youth work, and have been here ever since.
St Laurence is a missional church to young people in the sense that it isn’t a youth church or even a youth congregation, but at its very heart seeks to serve, love, come alongside and bring young people to faith. That means we welcome anyone, no exclusions, of any age to come and be part of this exciting journey. Our gauntlet to anyone joining us is this: bring yourself, bring your prayers, bring your energy, bring your time and bring your giving for the sake of young people coming to faith.
We have been working to a four-point model, given to us by Bishop Stephen Cottrell. This has remained a helpful model for us to work with, particularly in being able to see opportunities for new initiatives and how they fit within the big picture.
Contact: make contact with young people. Go to where they are: schools, youth clubs and housing areas.
Nurture: nurture the contact through regularly meeting up, chatting, getting to know their stories, their lives, what makes them tick.
Commitment: offer them a place and opportunity to commit their lives to Christ.
Growth: grow that faith through discipleship, relationship and giving them the opportunity to help others.
Over these last few years I have had the privilege of working with some amazing and hilarious, yet broken and desperate young people. We have seen young people come to faith, get baptised, grow in confidence, lead services and become leaders who then lead other young people to faith. We have also seen many ‘tough to swallow’ outcomes, where young people have walked away from God, lost faith, made attempts to take their own lives or made lifestyle choices that mean they self-exclude. This work we know we are called to was never promised to be easy, but as someone once said to me about working with young people, ‘If not us then who? If not now, then when?’
One story I am always reminded of is when we took a group of young people to Oxford for the weekend a few years ago. I sat with a 17-year-old lad who I knew pretty well called Jay and he started to share about what was going on with him. Jay looked at me and said: ‘My mum has had bipolar for many years and about 18 years ago she was taken to a hospital to be cared for full-time. While in the hospital she was groomed and raped by a male nurse and I was the result, so I’ve never known my father. So how am I supposed to know what this father in heaven’s love even looks like for me?’
I was speechless. I sat, I cried, I listened and I prayed. I am still in touch with Jay even though he isn’t in church; he often pops in to say hi and speaks so fondly of the time he spent with us, and how different his life would have been if he hadn’t come along at that time.
We have continued to spend time going away for weekends with young people as they are so fruitful, and we know that God loves to meet each of us intimately. We also know that on weekends away often very deep hurts come to the surface for so many young people. One lad we took away said it was the only time in the year that he allowed himself to cry for his mum who had passed away two years earlier. With each young person going through any sort of pain we seek to be there and minister to them through prayer and petition, that in those moments Jesus might be enabled to meet them in their pain and bring healing to their lives.
My heart is to see more and more churches spring up across the UK that have a missional heart for young people. Imagine a time when each and every church is missional to a specific people group, be it children or young families, older people or refugees and asylum seekers. Churches could share resources, manpower and funding. No church would be exclusive to age, but each would welcome all people to put their shoulder to the plough and seek to love those
If you’re thinking of becoming a missional church to young people, here are some pointers:
Pray that you would be obedient to what God is calling you to, that people would get on board and that hearts would be softened to change.
Get the whole church on board: the young people, church leaders, worship team, pastoral team, children’s workers, the lot.
Sit down with these people and have focused times to pray, plan and seek God’s heart for the young people who don’t know God in your area.
Think about what you want to achieve and how you’re going to achieve it.
Make a plan, and map out a time-framed set of things you want to see happen.
Think about where young people are - schools, parks, clubs etc - and go there.
Keep your objectives simple but big enough that you won’t just complete them in the first year.
Think about money and how you want to fund the things you want to do. Most importantly: pray.
Pray for more wisdom, patience and for God’s hand to be on all of this
Chris West is youth work director at St Laurence Reading
