Forging Ahead
It’s time to begin looking to the future and how we can return to face to face youth and children’s ministry. God has equipped many, many people with wonderful, wacky , creative ideas to keep connections with the children and youth in the churches. Youth ministry did not stopped, it just looked different.
Zoom, teams etc have been a tremendous help but nothing beats face to face meetings with our young people. Now is the time to start thinking about what our autumn programmes will look like. What works and what doesn’t and it’s a great time to create a vision for our ministry. Protocols have been confusing and lets be honest people do interpret them differently .But thanks to our friends in the Church of Ireland youth department , they have created an encompassing document to help us to forge ahead with youth and children’s ministries .
Looking ahead, it is important that we still base our activities on the latest government guidelines, do our risk assessments and child protection training. However, it is vital to forge ahead because we all need help to journey in our faith, to relearn how to play and socialise again and also a support system. Children’s and youth ministry provides this in abundance. As we journey through this crisis, looking ahead, we can begin to look to the future and how – on a carefully managed basis – we can restart youth ministry activities over the coming weeks.
CIYD with the help of the other denominations have produced a fantastic document with wonderful ideas of things to do with our young people that will help us forge ahead with our kids and youth ministries. It tells you the how , the why and what to try eg:
‘Lunch on the Lawn’ – with everyone bringing their own picnic,
dropping off a card and a bag of sweets to each young person’s household,
drive–in movies in your church car park and many more.
Download it and be encouraged.
https://www.ireland.anglican.org/cmsfiles/pdf/news/Committee/CIYD-Covid-Forging-Ahead-May-21.pdf