Street Smart (eBook)

What is your passion as a Christian? I realized many years ago that my deepest desire was to communicate the love of God to young people, and as I became involved in youth work I realized that God had given me the gifts to do it.

I’ve been involved with youth and community work for a long time – since 1993, when I married and moved to Southampton where my wife, Gillian, worked. Along the way I’ve met a lot of people, gained a lot of experience, and most importantly, trained and qualified as a Youth and Community Worker. I’ve run outreach projects from a cheap, converted camper van in Southampton and from The Message’s state-of-the-art, well-equipped buses in Manchester; I’ve worked in challenging inner-city communities and scattered rural ones; I’ve taught in youth clubs, schools, colleges and prisons; and I’ve travelled the world and seen similar work going on in America, Australia, Malaysia and Thailand. So the advice and suggestions I’ll be making in these pages come from three sources: my professional training, years of practical experience, and a heart that wants to reach out to young people and show them how to meet Jesus.

I’ve also visited a lot of churches where people are burning with enthusiasm to go out and contact young people and take the message of God’s love to them. I’ve given talks and presentations, and over and over again people have said, “Please give us some guidance about how to get started, how to get a youth work project off the ground.”

My advice, first of all, is to get the basics right. However keen you are to get out there and start meeting people, you will store up trouble for yourselves if you rush at it. The groundwork may not sound exciting – and you may cringe at the thought of committees and management and rotas and training – but unless you are prepared to put in the time to get these things set up, you will find either that your project fizzles out through lack of support, or that your surrounding communities (and the local agencies which operate in them) are unwilling to engage with you.

Lots of people – faithful, enthusiastic Christians who trust wholeheartedly in the Lord – find this stage frustrating. “Just pray,” they say, “and have faith. If God is in the project, he’ll lead it where he wants it to go.” That’s fine, as far as it goes. I always pray for a project – it’s the foundation of all I do. But what if I do nothing but pray? Who will organize the training, or make sure there’s petrol in the bus, or get a million other jobs done? Yes, we’ll trust in God – but he’s relying on us to do our part, in the best way we can. And that means thinking things through before we get started.

I have known churches which started doing some youth work simply because they found they had money available, and it seemed a good use of their resources. Sometimes it’s all worked out well – but sometimes the whole project has fallen apart because it was started with no real plan in place. So let’s look at how to plan well. Faith is certainly essential to all we do, and it’s important in youth outreach work: we have faith that God will lead us to the right people, and that he will change lives. But having faith is not an excuse not to do things properly!

What is your vision?

Why are you taking the gospel onto the street? I know that when I first got involved with youth work, I was driven by the desire to reach young people with the message of salvation which transformed my own life.

I have written elsewhere (in Nobody’s Child) about my childhood, spent in foster care and children’s homes. In spite of repeated efforts to sort my life out, I ended up homeless and living on the streets. I felt completely worthless, and it wasn’t until I encountered Jesus – in the shape of some wonderful Christians who welcomed me and put their arms around me, dirty and smelly as I was – that I began to believe that I could be of value to anyone.

I want to share that experience with others. I want to take the wonderful message of God’s love to people who have missed out on love and friendship and caring, and tell them that they matter. Unfortunately, church isn’t always the best place to do it. I’ve found that the best place to meet young people is on their own territory – in the street or at school – where they’re relaxed and more willing to listen to what we have to say.

However, it’s not enough to say, “We want to reach young people with the message of God’s love.” That may be your ultimate vision, but how are you going to achieve it? For that, you need much more detailed aims and objectives.

Do you want to do something on a small scale – maybe a tea, coffee or soup run, that will enable you to meet people on the street? That’s fine. Lots of organizations do a fantastic job doing just that. It’s a real service and it opens up the possibility of all sorts of interesting conversations. There’s absolutely no problem if that’s your vision.

What if you want to develop this work further – do you have more long-term aims? Would you eventually like to have a building where you can operate a youth club of some kind? Most churches have premises of one sort or another that they may want to use if the young people they contact are willing to go there. What sort of work do you want to develop? A café where food is served and with speakers coming in? A coffee bar with games? With computer training? With an advisory service? (Health, relationships or employment advice are always popular, as are drug and alcohol information, but you need some professional input.) Perhaps your ultimate aim is to run a non-alcoholic bar where young people can meet their friends. Or a bus ministry like the one we ran at The Message where we had double-decker buses kitted out as mobile youth centres, with drinks machines, DVDs and plasma screens, games consoles and sound systems. You may want to specialize in outreach through sports, running a football, rugby or basketball club.

It’s worth talking to other local churches and youth workers, so that you know what else is currently available (there’s no point in setting up in accidental competition with a similar scheme in the next street – there’s plenty for us to do for God without repeating what others are doing!) and also what has been tried (and maybe failed) in the past. You need to know your patch, and its history. What are the needs in the area that aren’t being met by existing work? Don’t be put off, however, if God has given you a clear vision for something that has been tried before without success: perhaps it wasn’t right for the area twenty years ago, but maybe now is the right time.

Whatever your aims, you need to explore all the possibilities and work out what is feasible with the expertise and funding you have available or are likely to be able to get. You may have to start small, but have a plan for your long-term goals. There’s no harm in dreaming – and God can move mountains!

Start by thinking whom you want to target – Teens? Pre-teens? Families? Then look at as many possible scenarios as you can think of. What does God want you to do? Go to him in prayer.

Setting up a constitution

From prayer to paperwork may seem like a big step. And a constitution sounds like a bureaucratic step too far, doesn’t it? But actually, it’s a really useful tool.

A constitution is the governing document for your organization. It defines your purpose and states clearly what your objectives are, how you plan to operate and how you are organized. Going through the process of writing all this down can be really helpful. It makes you get all your ideas down on paper in a sensible form so that everyone involved can see what you’re aiming to achieve. When people see that, they can buy into it prayerfully, and give you their support because they know where you’re going.

It’s also a safety device: it means that the project can’t get diverted from your original purpose, and it can be used to settle any disputes that might arise. It also makes people accountable to the original vision, and ensures that financial procedures are laid down so that funding is properly administered.

Having a proper constitution adds to your credibility: it indicates to other people that you’re well organized and serious about what you’re doing. It also enables other organizations to judge whether you meet their criteria for co-operative work or even funding.

Once you know your aims and objectives, you can decide on a name for your project. The name is important. For a start, you don’t want to duplicate something else that’s already established in your area. It causes confusion, and if any untoward incidents occur at the other project, then you could be affected. Be circumspect about your name – check it out on Google and with plenty of other people before you decide on it. It’s possible to accidentally choose something that has unfortunate connotations or particular local meanings you may not be aware of.

In general, your constitution should include the following information:

• the name of the project
• where it is based
• what its purpose is
• the names of the officials: a chairperson, a treasurer, a secretary to take notes at meetings, a main project leader, and many other necessary roles
• the...