It’s been a day for realising things.

Today it was really cool to meet up with the team of Gillingham YFC and good friend Nick Shepherd. A couple of years back Nick started his PhD and used us at GYFC as part of the study to look at how young people become Christians; and by that meaning what is actually going on.

From our point of view, we wanted to know what was going on to, particularly why young people were doing what they were doing, and what was it that was making things successful. Crack that and we could keep going.

Today Nick fed back something that really surprised me. He talked about how, actually, we had developed a Christian community through 133, the name of the GYFC drop in. Young people joined this community, became part of it by being accepted by others in that community, and started to assign titles and roles within that community.

Looking back I can see how some were seen as older siblings, some as parents. It worries me in some way that Sarah and myself became, and are still called by some, grandma and grandpa. I still have a mug for ‘The Greatest Granddad in the world’ which I use regularly and brings a smile of memory now and again.

I found today’s chat fascinating. We made a conscious decision to set up a drop in. The Christians there were genuine; genuine in their interest of the young people, genuine in their love for the young people. As someone said, the relationship did not exist just through the project, it existed and was/still is a reality outside with visits to homes and so on. As a result of this commitment to each other a community developed
in such a way that we needed an observer who visited a number of times to make us aware of this.

One notable thing, which again I had not realised until today, was that all felt part of the Christian community that we had developed. Today all still are part of the community. There is not a hierarchal structure, there is no membership based on belief. All are full members.

In this setting things like Alpha for Youth work remarkably well. Out of this community of belonging young people genuinely consider their options and only respond when they want to, or when they feel convicted to do so. As they are already full members of the community, they do not need to respond to gain acceptance. They know they are accepted already and that a decision to become a Christian or not is not going to affect that acceptance one iota.

For me, as I embark on a thought process of what is church and how do we develop fresh expressions in emerging culture it throws up a lot of questions, memories and thoughts. It reminds me again that genuine serving relationship with no agenda other than to share Christ relevantly and see what happens is the secret of what is needed.

Thanks Nick, Mal, Abs, Duncan and Lisa for starting the thoughts rolling again. You are a bunch of diamonds … do diamonds come in bunches?