Back in November we had a sleepover in church with a gang of our young people. I’ll never quite understand why we call them sleepovers as very little sleep was had… but there was definitely loads of fun! Whilst we had to keep distances and use gallons of hand gel, it was great to see them hanging out together and being family, after so much time apart. We had a quiz which helped us to understand that for somethings in life there is not a simple yes/no answer. Somethings require much more thought or a more detailed answer. A chippy supper gave us energy to play on into the early hours.
We got super competitive about lots of games and challenges eg. balancing golf balls on top of one another, playing rounders, picking up penne pasta with spaghetti… How stressed can you get about a piece of spaghetti snapping or failing to run fast enough around the building to score a rounder?!
We chatted about the fact that there are some things that just don’t matter or aren’t quite as important in the big picture of life! But your belief system and values are important. They can determine who you are, what you do and how you behave, so it is important that we carve out time to chat about these things. They matter.
Chatting with our young people is always a real privilege. They are so full of questions and can teach us all so much about the world in which we live. Their concerns, their fears, their hopes and aspirations for the future should shape the word we create for them to flourish in. Some of the questions we chatted through included:
What are you plans for me?
Why do so many negative things happen to me and my friends?
Why did you make human kind?
Why are people unkind to one another? These are just a handful of the questions that our young people have. How would you go about answering these questions?
A huge thanks must go to the youth leaders who gave up time preparing for the evening and foregoing a whole night’s sleep – just because they love our young people and know the importance of sharing their faith with them too.