Excuses, excuses

It's been a couple of weeks since I last blogged, and I'm desperate not to become one of those people who has a blog but never posts anything. I guess it's just a case of developing the habit.

And anyway, I have what I consider to be a reasonable excuse! Last weekend (last in July) I was away in Nottingham with the Ascension Eagles Cheerleaders as they attempted to retain their position as Britain's best cheerleading programme. It was an exciting, if chaotic, weekend - an odd mixture of of high drama, immense sporting endeavor and more predictable youth worker responsibilities like trying to get young people to go to bed at a semi-reasonable hour! In case you're interested AEC won three out of the four National Champion titles they were up for - not a bad weekend's work I'd say!

And then I spent a few days in Leicester with my sister and brother-in-law, sleeping, eating and watching videos as well as putting the world to rights.

And then this weekend I was rather distracted by the second Ashes test, to the extent that I almost missed a Jools Holland concert at Kenwood House! It's a long story...!

However, in amongst all the chilling and cricket watching, I had a rather sobering experience on Friday night. I'd been invited to the 21st birthday party of a girl who'd grown up in my last youth group and discovered that five or six of her contemporaries from church were also invited, some of whom I'd not seen for a year. It was great to catch up with what they've been up to - one's now part of an Arsenal coaching programme, another's just back from a sandwich year in the US and three more have just graduated - and there was something very comfortable about being in the company of people who have allowed me to "practise" my skills as a youth worker on them (not least because I think most of them have found it in their hearts to forgive the more extreme mistakes!). When I got back from the party I found myself thinking about some of the experiences that we (either as a group, or me with individuals) had shared together. Some were profoundly spiritual experiences - standing alongside them as they've struggled to develop in their relationships with God - others were to do with big performances we'd done as a youth group in which individuals were enabled to develop their creative gifts, and even more were just the day-to-day privileges of being a youth worker - watching the church football team, long conversations over coffee.

While it can be unhelpful to look back with rose-tinted spectacles, it occurred to me that this particular group of young people was part of the youth group at a time when it was numerically strong, had great manpower resources (in terms of full and part time youth workers) and had the space to develop its involvement in creative arts and social action. These young people had almost exclusively grown up in church / Christian families and were part of a very tight peer group. All of them had experience of short term mission, either in Britain or overseas, some for extended periods, and all bar one had been baptised as a believer during their time in the youth group.

And yet, as I talked to them on Friday night about what they've been doing and what their plans were for the future, I got the distinct impression that for at least half of them, their faith was not something high on their list of priorities (and I'm aware that this proportion is reflected by other members of that peer group not at the party on Friday). I think there's a whole bunch of reasons for that, but it really got me thinking about what these young adults had really taken away with them from their time in the youth group. I've got a few theories buzzing around at the minute which I might conceivably post in the coming days...