Youth Events

Methodist Children and Youth Guidelines for Youth Workers, Parents, children 5-11 and youth 11-18 on social media, mobile phones and the internet. These are best practice guide lines to keep our children, our youth and ourselves safe. They can be found at www.childrenandyouth.org.uk

Whoever you are, wherever you are – new website for children, teenagers, youth workers & parents

A new website from the Methodist Church is offering resources for children, young people, parents and youth workers.

www.childrenandyouth.org.uk has age-appropriate sections offering stories, ideas and advice for children and young people themselves as well as specialist sections for youth and children’s workers.

“This isn’t just another website about working with young people,” said Penny Fuller, Children and Youth Development Officer for the Methodist Church. “It’s a hub of resources for the whole Church as we join children and young people on their journey of faith. It’s a place where children and young people can find advice and support as they live out their discipleship in the classroom, on the playground and in the high street.”

The website also has a special section dedicated to parents, with guidance and information for parenting children of all ages on topics ranging from bereavement to relationships.

The site’s specialist section for children and youth workers, The Well, is designed to help, resource and support workers or anyone involved in children’s or youth ministry.

The Well is the network for all those working with children and young people in the Methodist Church. It is open to all whether paid or voluntary. The Well aims to provide networking opportunities, training and retreats to help support those working with children and young people in a range of settings. Members of the Well receive a newsletter 3 times a year and regular emails keeping people informed of the latest events, opportunities and information from the Children and Youth team. There is a dedicated section on our website for the Well offering a range of information, advice and guidance.

The Methodist Youth Assembly has elected Sam Taylor as the Church’s new Youth President for 2011-2012.

“I am delighted to have been elected as youth president designate and I am greatly looking forward to starting the role in September,” said Sam, following his election at the Youth Assembly last weekend.

Sam, aged 17, is currently studying for his A-Levels and lives in Wellingborough in Northamptonshire. He attends Great Park Street Methodist Church in Nene Valley circuit in the Northampton District. This year he is working as a One Programme Participant (OPP) in a youth project linked to the church, Infuse Youth Cafe. The One Programme gives young people the opportunity to work for a year in their local churches and districts in creative projects that help to show Jesus to others. “At Infuse, I am running a cell group which has seen some amazing growth in young people’s faith over the last month or so,” said Sam. “I run an event called Worship@Infuse which has been running for nearly two years and has developed enormously in that time. I also look after the Youth Committee, making sure that they are the ones that drive the project forward.”

From September 2011, Sam will work part time for one year to serve the young people of the Methodist Church in Britain, making their voices heard and helping them to get more involved in every aspect of Church life. The Youth President is a paid post as part of the Children and Youth Team of the Methodist Church in Britain. Sam said, “I want to focus on empowering young people to be more involved in church life - it has to come from young people if we are going to get more young people coming into the Church. Young people need God in their lives and they need other young people to help them to find God. So the church needs young people at the centre of this, to make sure it is happening, and that the people that need God most are being reached.”

Sam will succeed current Youth President Christy-Anna Errington. “I’m really pleased Sam will be taking over from me next September,” said Christy-Anna. “So far in my year of office I have been focusing on building relationships within the Methodist Church and with outside organisations to find ways of working together more effectively. The resolutions from this year’s Youth Assembly have also been very useful in helping me to decide what to focus on for the rest of the year.”

This year’s Methodist Youth Assembly took place at the PGL Liddington Centre near Swindon from 19 to 21 November. Around 200 young Methodists gathered to make key decisions affecting the life of the Church with education, sports ministry, and peace in Israel and Palestine on the agenda.

Find out what happened when a group of young people went to Peru - a life-changing 'adventure'

Generous is a safe, online space designed to enable young people to discuss and act upon decisions made at Youth Assembly – an interactive body designed to maximise the impact of young people’s influence on the Methodist Church in Britain. Young people can sign up to the site and pledge their commitment to different goals, such as confronting racist behaviour or challenging Churches on the opportunities available to them.

The website offers young people the opportunity to work together on maximising the impact they can have on the wider Church. Every young person who signs up and joins the debate becomes an activist and voice for social change.

Pete Brady, Methodist Youth President, said: “Generous is a great way for young people to keep in touch with others they met at Youth Assembly. It offers the chance for young people to share things that affect them on a daily basis in their lives and churches. This is an opportunity for young people to be part of the decision-making process emerging from the Youth Assembly that will then play its part in re-shaping the Methodist Church. I am very excited about how this will increase youth participation across the Districts. Generous is easy and free to join. The more young people leaving comments, signing up to actions, meeting in the chat rooms; the more dynamic the forum will be.”

Pete Brady has piloted the website with a group of ‘Generous DJs’ – young people from Youth Assembly who have tested the site’s usability. The DJs will also serve as promoters for Generous – getting their peers enthused about the site and working on developing its content, direction and moderation.

Check out Generous at http://methodist.generous.org.uk/. The site will form a key component of the new Children & Youth website set for launch this summer.

The Bolton & Rochdale Methodist District produced a DVD – ‘Alive and Kicking’ – showing some exciting ways God’s Good News is being shared by ordinary people today. It is inspiring. This is a story of how the DVD enthused one person to mobilise a church to hold an outstanding event.

Queen’s Hall Methodist Mission, Wigan , has Café worship at 7pm every third Sunday of the month. The district DVD was shown in the first half of the year. Seeing the Women’s Pamper Day at Holcombe Brook gave an idea to one of our young people who is 15.

The church committee that organises social events thought it was a splendid idea, especially when the teenager went through the detail of her plans.

The free event was held on Friday 13^th November and it was fantastic.The teenager organised the whole event, the church simply supported her in prayer, publicity and catering. This is how it panned out. There were 8 acts, 5 of them made up of teenagers! These acts were assessed by Simon Cowell, Piers Morgan and Amanda Holden (or three people who had a passing resemblance to these celebrities!). The teenager held it all together as compere and interviewer.

The judges reduced the acts from 8 to 5 for voting purposes and then there was a secret ballot (you had to vote before you could eat). After a sumptuous supper the results were revealed in reverse order – slowly in the best television manner. The winners – a wonderful girl dance group called ‘The Stunners’ – were presented with a plaque amidst huge applause and emotion.

Our minister, Stephen Dunn, was then able to deliver a short talk on how God loves us all and has given every one of us talents. This was delivered to about 100 people; children, teenagers and adults, Christians and those not-yet-Christians. Stephen then invited back ‘The Stunners’ and the evening concluded with some modern worship songs from the teenage band ‘Access’.

This was a hugely enjoyable evening accessible to people from 8 to 80. One mother said ‘It was wonderful, I cried with laughter to such an extent by face was black when I got home due to my mascara running!’

If you want to be inspired by the Alive and Kicking DVD then contact Mark Street, District Evangelism Enabler on 01204 522 569 or mark.street@methodist.org.uk

On Friday 13^th November we went to the Methodist Youth Assembly at Durham . When we arrived at Durham station we were quickly transported to Ushaw College where the Assembly took place. When we arrived we chose sessions that were of interest to us, and as a group we chose three sessions which were: Youth Violence, Equality and Diversity and You and Your Rights. Friday night worship was ‘youth like’ with many worship songs and details of how the Assembly was going to pan out over the week.

On Saturday, we rose early to a lovely breakfast and headed straight for our first session: Youth Violence. The ideas that came out of this discussion were that there are not enough clubs to encourage youth off the streets and out of violence. We discussed the influences of the media and how it has changed over the last few years. Youth are now exposed to the media more than ever before and media has changed with more violence in games and in films. The press is always portraying a negative image of youth. We heard facts about crime and that only six percent of ‘knife’ crime was committed by youths. This begs the question: why are we always getting the ‘blame’? We need to pray for the youth more and: for the victims of ‘knife’ crime; for media to cover more positive stories about youth; and to create a smaller void between us and other people.

After lunch of soup and sandwiches we went to an Equality and Diversity session, this was an interesting talk, we made a diversity collage with words and pictures of ourselves and it was stuck up on a wall. We suggested that we should do more to understand what it is that makes us ‘us’. We came up with an idea to make a day where we share our stories, food and traditions with others from around the globe. This would be a special day in the Methodist calendar. But then, when it came down to it, we found that that it would be nearly impossible to organise so we suggested it should be done by individual churches. We think that we have a good understanding of diversity in Bolton .

In the late afternoon, we went to a You and Your Rights session. This was all about what we should stand up for in order to change the world and the Methodist church. One huge issue that came out was women and the church, and that even though we can say we are not discriminating against women, we need to embrace others who do not practice this in order to help them change their ways, especially in other Christian denominations.

On Sunday we rose early again and went to vote on key issues that we wanted to take forward to the Methodist Conference through the elected Youth Coordinator.

Why not visit the methodistchildren website for lots of exciting things to see and do

mctxt4u is a regular texting service for 9 to 13 year-olds of its kind. Launched by MethodistChildren, the service aims to keep children in touch with what’s going on in the world, give them food for thought and help them to get more involved in church life.

From 4 October 2006, children who subscribe to the service will receive texts under 8 different topics: Links, UrWorld, Challenge, World, Action, Prayer, DaBuzz and Headsup. To sign up, they can simply text JOIN to 07786205203 and it’s absolutely free.

Penny Fuller, MethodistChildren 9-13 Project Worker, said that; “With over 90% of 12 year-olds now owning a mobile phone, this is a great way to reach young people. Church can sometimes seem boring or irrelevant to young people and we want to show them that there are loads of exciting ways to get involved. We hope that by covering a variety of issues and even by setting the odd challenge, we can help them engage with a whole host of topics and think about what being Christian means for them”.

Users of the service can respond to any of the texts they receive from mctxt4u by having their say on DaBlab - the bulletin board in the brand new 9-13s section of the MethodistChildren website (www.methodistchildren.org.uk). The new look website has much more to offer, including the latest film and music reviews, puzzles, BrainEacs activities (puzzles and games), a prayer page and much more. There will also be a chance for children to find out what’s going on around to world and to share their own stories.

Penny said, “There’ll be loads more to see and do on the site. As it continues to develop and grow, we’re looking for groups and individuals to get involved, let us know what they’d like to see and even to contribute their own material. It’s their website, so it should be done their way”.

The website also has an area for children under 12, with lots to do, including fun and games, a storybook and even a gallery for children to submit their own pictures. But it’s not all for the children; children’s workers have their own section of the site, with an activity page for leaders, resources, training information and a bulletin board.

If you are aged 11 - 25 and you, or the group to which you belong, are involved in a project, need help with funds, visit the website, www.myaltd.org.uk to find out more