How about this for a plan?
* gather a group of young people together
* take them to the home of an older person living in the local community
* give them paint and paintbrushes
* ask them to paint the garden shed
* offer them a BBQ afterwards.
That's what happened when we took the Ebe youth group out the other day for the first of our 'Youth and Social Action' sessions. Already, our young people are seeing that in serving others, we are in fact serving God. And that's it, isn't it? Following God is something you do, not just talk about!
Already looking forward to the next occasion!
Ebenezer Church and our local communities are certainly familiar with the annual Noise event over the May Day Bank Holiday weekend. Our young people are going to have some fresh opportunities to engage with Noise projects throughout the year. We are launching a new strategy around Ebe Youth and Social Action - helping our youth understand the importance of social justice and action, learning together that God calls us to be involved in serving the most vulnerable people in our society and indeed, the world.
At the same time, our young people will have a load of fun. It won't all be work, work, work.
At last week's Annual Thanksgiving Service, we featured a video of our young people simply talking about their experience of Hope18. Our young people are great but they can be random so no surprises that the video included humour and laughter; a lot of chatter; touching moments; and a 'name the duck' ceremony. It was wonderful to see just how much these guys loved serving God together through doing some pretty hard work. Did they really enjoy supervising the rubbish tip?
If I had to name the one moment that impacted me the most, it was this - God genuinely spoke to them. That should be a challenge to us! If God can speak to young people, then surely he can speak to me? Nice one Ebe Youth! Showing us the way again.
Derek Powell
On Vision Sunday, Esther shared with us how we were being called by God to a Year of Prayer. It is exciting to imagine what will come as a result of us engaging with prayer in a different, deeper and determined way.
We are sharing this same vision with our young people and challenging them to brave some big prayers and just see how God moves in response. To help with this, we are using the Sunday morning Youth Group 'The Word' as an opportunity to run the 'Origins' prayer course provided by 24-7 Prayer. We will explore how to pray and how to listen to God.
Our hope is that the whole church family will encourage our young people to pray - pray together and pray more and pray big. Actually, our young people may well end up leading the way!
