Check it Out is changing lives
Here’s Claire Parry with update from our weekend at the Youthwork Conference…
Hey everyone,
We’ve just returned from the Youthwork Conference in Eastbourne, completely exhausted but totally blessed by some really
encouraging conversations that I wanted to share with you all.
A number Check it Out packs were sold but we were more thrilled by the number of people who are aware of the course, are using it and seeing God change lives as a result! So many of the youth leaders said that this was exactly what they were looking for so.
Although the resource is billed as one for unchurched young people several of the youth leaders said that it was also brilliant for their churched young people, just as in the same way many of us have been on Alpha courses although we may have been a Christian for years.
Here are some highlights of our encouraging conversations:
Jimmy Dale is a youth worker in Forest Gate, London. Some of us have worked with him on team at Spring Harvest, but many of us know him from SOLID. He works with some street kids from Forest Gate and was absolutely blown away when, at SOLID 2009, seven boys from his group became Christians.
Jimmy came up to the stand at the conference absolutely beaming and told us that these seven boys, plus two of the young leaders are getting baptised in January!
One Sunday, as the service was taking place and some of the young people were giving a report on SOLID, a mother of one of the boys rushed into the church, ran down the aisle and up to the front, (completely unaware of ‘church etiquette’!!), took hold of the microphone and said, “My son’s life has changed… he doesn’t get detentions, doesn’t beat up his sister, isn’t disrespectful anymore. I don’t know what you guys did but keep doing it!!” The unchurched families of these boys have pplanned a big celebration for after all their sons get baptised!!!
Another boy chatting to Jimmy said, “None of my friends are going to like me now that I’m a Christian… I’d better invite them to my baptism!”
We also met some youth leaders from St Stevens, Bentilee, Stoke-on-Trent. They have been using Check it Out with young people from a local estate and said, “This really works. We’d recommend it to anyone. Kids on the estate have engaged with this like nothing else we’ve used.” On one particular week 11 out of 17 of the young people prayed a commitment prayer, and the following week the other six did!!! Please pray for these young people as their parents are telling them they can’t be Christians. They have been coming along to the group every week asking for prayer to be strong and for their families to accept their decision.
We chatted with a youth leader from Suffolk who is also currently using the Check it Out course. He said that it was going really well, and remarked that the Vox Pops in particular were effective as the young people can hear from others their own age. His Check it Out group are a mixture of Christian and not-yet-Christian young people and he said it worked well with both. He took away a handful of flyers to give to all the youth workers in his area!
James Bell, from Chelmsford is currently up to session 4 with his young people and said that this course is going really well, especially the games!! Two of his young leaders are running the course and he said that the material that we had provided meant that this was great to release young leaders into doing this kind of thing.
We also spoke to a team of youth workers from Colchester who, back in 2002, had a two week long SoundNation Mission, presented by Viz-A-Viz Ministries, in the Colchester schools. Their SoundNation Cafés went on for five years after this event and they now have several young people who are dedicated Christians who originally came along as a result of these schools weeks!! Praise God!!
I hope you are all encouraged by these conversations… we certainly were!! All glory to God – Amen!
Claire xx