WEDNESDAY'S NEWS

New vision for youth ministry

Abandoning a highly centralised model for one where young people encounter Christ through activities at the local level is how Archdeacon Andrew Forster, introducing the report of the Church of Ireland Youth Department, summed up the new approach to youth work in the Church of Ireland under the leadership of Mr David Brown.

David Brown was appointed just over a year ago to head up the Church of Ireland Youth Department and his first initiative was to introduce more flexible structures for funding and expanding youth work at the local level. Standing Orders were suspended to enable Mr Brown to participate in a presentation to General Synod and he told Synod members that the current challenge to the Church was to address its young people’s “faith, questions, creativity and desire to belong” and to encourage them to have a say in shaping society.

Mr Brown spoke also of the need to affirm the Church’s youth workers in their ministry and introduced the Synod to two of the youth workers presently engaged in this ministry.

Andrew Brannigan of Down and Dromore Diocese addressed the Synod, speaking of young people’s readiness to receive Jesus Christ and of the present great need for youth leadership training. It was vitally important, he said, for the Church to nurture its young people, using them to plan and deliver programmes for their peers so that they would develop their leadership skills.

Greg Fromholtz, working in the Diocese of Dublin and Glendalough, spoke of the need for an attitude shift in the Church, saying that rather than waiting for young people to come into church, “The time is now to risk, to advance, to get out of our pews, take the church out to the streets and entice young people back in”. He told Synod members that this work had already begun with a number of projects in the Diocese and that it was important to continue this momentum, keeping in mind the realisation that the youth “are not just the church of tomorrow, they are the church of today”.

In the debate on the report speakers from a number of dioceses reflected the increase in the volume of youth work now being undertaken and its increasing visibility at the diocesan and parish level.

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