I really enjoyed tonight. Part of my responsibility now that I have joined Sarah’s youth team is to mentor/pastor/support/encourage/challenge a couple of cell group leaders. Tonight I met in the Noodle Bar with ‘my’ 2 cell group leaders, Amber and Jake.

I have known these 2 great young people for a couple of years and its particularly exciting for me personally as Amber became a Christian through the work of Gillingham YFC.

Tonight we sat and ate, they chatted and I listened. I listened to their dreams and their struggles. How they attempt to contextualise their thoughts for their cell group. They told me sometimes things just do not work. I asked what they did when things don’t work and they told me they pray and ask God. Young people see things so clearly and it was refreshing to hear such a clear, honest and quite obvious answer.

AS we chatted more I learned more of their dreams and was reminded that this is what youth work is all about; supporting and enabling young people to reach and achieve their dreams. Not that I think I need to ‘enable’ them, even if I could, as Amber and Jake know, at the moment, where they are going.

Tonight has kind of made me regret the move into the management side of things. I love what I do, and it is great to be able to encourage other youth workers and tackle issues with them, plant new works and all of that. Flipping heck – it’s a very exciting job to do.

Saying that, I do miss the close contact that matters with individual young people. I believe it is all about investment of time – and tonight I think I came close to achieving what I set out to do all those years ago when I became a youth worker. Not just me investing in young people, because tonight was a to way thing and clearly Amber and Jake have invested in me, and blessed me far more than I could ever dream of being able to bless them. Tonight I really feel that I have returned to my roots and in some ways it is shocking to see how quickly I can forget how youth work works (?!)

Thanks Amber and Jake for bringing me ‘alive’ for the weekend. Thanks Sarah for giving me the opportunity to come back to youth work.