St Edmunds Chrickhowell- Engaging with young people

Connecting with the wider community

With restrictions lifting, what opportunities does your church have to connect within your community?

St Edmunds, Crickhowell have been working with young people from their community for some time and when the pandemic hit, like most, they quickly had to learn to move onto zoom and to run their group virtually. During this time, one of the leaders heard about the launch of Scripture Union’s new strategy; ‘Revealing Jesus’, helping churches to think through how they journey alongside children and young people as they explore faith. This helped them to plan and work out how the wanted to re start their youth work face to face.

They were also able to get a local scheme to buy two pop up shelters and are creating a short film with their young people around wellbeing, and how being able to meet up again after covid is helping them with their wellbeing.

A couple of weeks ago, I had the opportunity to go and visit the group on their second face to face meet up. They have gained permission to hold their group and put up their shelters on their local playing/ park field. They were very well organized when it came to setting up activities and being covid ready and safe for themselves and the young people who came along.

It was a really lovely to see the way the smiles on the faces of the young people as they arrived and the way that they engaged with the leaders. It was a pretty simple event in itself, a game of rounders set up where the leaders played along with the young people. At the end a chance to sit around in a circle and use some conversation cards as a way of re-connecting with the young people.

The young people engaged well and it was so worth the effort of the leaders and the work that they put into creating the safe space for them all to gather together.

Is this potentially something that your church could look to do in your community, either with children or young people or with all ages within your church (covid restrictions apply) If you want to chat about possibilities then please do get in contact.