Good News for Young People

The Church of England's National Youth Strategy

Bishop of Blackburn's introductory speech to the General Synod
Friday, 15 November 2002

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Members of Synod may have found this a long and tiring week. I am bound to say I wondered whether this debate in the last hours of the group of sessions might seem to the young people of our Church and society something of a hangover. Personally I would rather say, ‘You have saved the best wine until now.’ I hope members of the Synod will agree. Good News for our young people is the key to the report I have the honour to present on behalf of the Board of Mission and the Board of Education.

Some of what lies before us has felt a long time coming. It was in 1999 that a Board of Mission conference, ACE ’99, reviewing the decade of evangelism, asked for a Youth Evangelism Fund. As the Archbishops’ Council discussed the proposal (what sort of fund should it be? what sort of invitation was being offered? to follow Christ or to join the Church?) the Archbishop of York was not alone in asking, ‘what sort of Church?’ And from that grew a resolution to listen to young people, to consider the wider implications of the Council’s commitment to children and young people and to look afresh at equipping the Church for evangelism.

In fact the time since that discussion has not been wasted. In July 2001, the Council resolved to hear from young people on what the Council’s theme 3 might imply for them. What did it mean ‘to welcome and encourage children and young people, and be encouraged by them, and to engage with them on their spiritual journey wherever they are’? In October 2001 at their residential meeting in Sheffield, the Archbishops’ Council met a varied group of young people: two were active young members of the outreach work of St Thomas Crooks; one had rediscovered his faith in an RSCM choir course at a cathedral; another member of the Young Adult Observer Group at General Synod was passionately committed to the contribution young people could make to the Church’s sense of direction and purpose; yet another had come to a living faith through the care and completely un-pushy support of a Christian worker in her difficult personal circumstances. In November 2001 the Archbishops’ Council began to identify their priorities in the light of these encounters. The Council’s theme 2, ‘to co-ordinate a strategy for encouraging and equipping church members to further the task of evangelism’ began to feature in the emerging strategy through the development of its thinking on the Youth Evangelism Fund. In April 2002 the Archbishops’ Council agreed its Youth Strategy. In May 2002, endorsing this, the House of Bishops sought a greater emphasis on service, challenge and adventure as part of young people’s engagement in mission. Our crowded July agenda prevented earlier consideration by General Synod itself.

Let me be very clear. The strategy before us is not born out of desperation nor does it come out of the blue. It is built on solid foundations. Members of the previous General Synod and many others will be aware of the report Youth a Part in 1996, which reminded the Church at large of the importance and urgency of work with young people. Much has flowed from that report, as Synod discovered in July 2000 when it considered its impact. Members may be surprised to learn that, although there are no accurate national statistics at present, it is widely accepted that the Church of England now employs more youth workers than does local government. The Archbishop of Canterbury’s event for young people Time of our Lives in 1999 made a dramatic impact on participants and their bishops alike. There has also been substantial, but often almost unnoticed, growth in opportunities for what is generally called ‘alternative worship’ for young people. We recognise the alternative style but reject the name, seeing the worship as truly what the Church does. If Soul Survivor is one of the largest and best known, there are smaller versions up and down the country. The monthly Unbelievable service on Sunday evenings in Blackburn Cathedral is a good example of this. This leads me to remind the Synod that not all young people are the same and of the work among young people done in and through our cathedrals. I reckon that in various ways at least fifty young people are part of the life of Blackburn Cathedral. The Church of England continues to have a strong and substantial commitment to work with and outreach among young people.

However, no one in this Synod would be complacent about the relations between the institutional Church and young people but neither should we panic. This is no time for despair. Many young people have a stronger awareness of the things of the spirit than those of earlier generations. There is often a great sense of community and of obligation to the planet and to each other. But there is also bewilderment at the spiritual market place and at the range of choices that earlier generations never had. It can all be so confusing. There is also simple ignorance of the Christian story at the heart of this community’s spiritual and cultural life. There are many claims on young people’s time and energy (not least on Sundays): the need to compete and to achieve, consumerism and materialism (this is hardly new; it was Wordsworth who said, ‘the world is too much with us, getting and spending, we lay waste to our powers’). So the work of nurture and encouragement for those young people who are active in the Church, or just clinging on, and of outreach to those who are effectively ignorant of the Good News is a high priority for the Church. The work will and should have an impact both on the young people who are active Christians, as they are recognised to be and come to feel a vital part of the Church, and on the Church, as it receives encouragement and ideas from that vitality, enthusiasm and sometimes impatience of young people. Like many Bishops, I have regular meetings with our young people across the diocese. This has proved a very useful learning encounter especially when we move on from navel-gazing at the Church.

With this strategy, we are offering a new way of working. The strategy is detailed, stating the purpose and reasons of each proposal with key tasks and timed outcomes. The strategy, if it is approved today, will be demanding but we hope not unrealistic over the next five years. The strategy will not just involve the Archbishops' Council, General Synod and  those working here in Church House; it is for the whole Church in the dioceses, deaneries and parishes. This is where the strategy has to come to life and its emphasis will vary from place to place according to need, context and resources. It will ultimately be effective when it has changed the attitudes of those committed members of the church who are not currently engaged in work with young people. They will have confidence accompanying them on their journey of faith, sharing their own experiences and being enriched by what they receive. Diocesan youth officers have taken part in consultations about the strategy and are broadly committed to their important role in its implementation. Where a diocese has no diocesan youth officer, it will be necessary for a named individual to take responsibility for the implementation of the strategy. This of course will be required if bids are to be made to the Evangelism Fund.

There are four elements to the strategy.

Young People and Worship is not about seeking to exercise control or to limit imagination. The purpose of achieving a national view of what really is going on is ultimately so that others can be encouraged and try things themselves. Members of General Synod will not be surprised to hear me say that for me the worship of the Church is centred on the Eucharist. The so-called Parish Communion movement, which began over fifty years ago, had a transforming effect on the worship of the Church, though not all for the good. Certainly the Eucharist came to the centre but what was in the end almost lost, certainly lost in parish after parish, was the quiet route in for the uncommitted or the tentative or the seeker after truth. You can sit in church for Mattins or Evensong without feeling out of it when everyone goes up and you don’t know what to do. So you can in the Family Service. But, and this may seem paradoxical: all-age worship cannot appeal to everyone. We think nothing of a popular mid-week service for the retired or mid-day service for the local workers; they count. Why not worship which is mainly for young people and often led by them? What are the obstacles? How can we promote best practice?

Young People as Leaders is an issue already embraced by the General Synod and by a number of dioceses. Young people are here; we hear their voices. But more can be done to enable them to be effective leaders in the Church, not just for the sake of the Church but to develop the leadership skills of Christian young people for the benefit of the world. 

Resourcing Youth Workers in the same way builds on experience and carries it forward. This section of the strategy concerns the great many volunteers who work with young people in and through parishes in a host of ways, their training and support, recognising the ecumenical Spectrum training and the need for further development. Resourcing Youth Workers is also about the growing army of paid, employed youth workers in parishes and deaneries. At present there is no agreed practice about how they are recognised and authorised (are they ministers? should they be licensed? does the diocese need to know about them?). Nor are there clear expectations about their training and experience. Nor is there entirely reliable data on how many there are and where they are. The suspicion is that they work above all in comparatively prosperous evangelical parishes. Does this mean there are ripe opportunities being missed elsewhere?

The last section is Young People and Mission . We recognise young people’s often very strong commitment to justice and peace and the relief of need. We also see the life-changing experience of community service and of gap years. There are currently few Diocesan-sponsored ways of relating that energy and experience to the hopes and aspirations of the Church and the wider Anglican Communion. The strategy seeks to explore ways. But key here is the challenging proposal for a Youth Evangelism Fund, which is fully endorsed by the Board of Education, as well as by the Board of Mission, and by the House of Bishops, as well as the Archbishops' Council. I believe that this Fund will give a powerful signal to the whole Church and beyond that we passionately want to meet young people wherever they are. It must also ensure some really exciting innovation. I hope, Chairman, that the Chairman of the Board of Mission may be called in the debate to make some detailed remarks about Youth Evangelism.

The strategy is detailed and demanding. It is for the whole Church. Although it is clearly an Anglican strategy there is a great deal of practical and effective youth work with ecumenical partners and we fully recognise the important role of the para-church organisations. Youth work training and practice is also very conscious of the importance of working inclusively. These realities lie unspoken within the strategy.

Above all the strategy recognises the great variety of gifts God has given the Church for ministry and leadership and for his work of transforming the kingdoms of this world into the kingdom of Christ. Like many a priest of my generation, I cut my teeth on a parish youth club in South London. I learned there, and I have no reason to change my view, that young people have God’s gifts in full measure. My prayer is that, through our initiative, they 'may have life and have it in all its abundance'. I have heard the Archbishop of York quote St Irenaeus as saying, ‘The glory of God is a human being fully alive.’ May they have that life. I commend the National Youth Strategy to the Synod.