Fellowship focus 6 - April 1999
The only way is up (11UP!)
About a year ago Chris rang up to arrange to come round and see Anita and myself. The words ' there's something I want to ask you ' were ringing in our ears. What could it be? Our worst fears were realised when he asked us outright " How do you feel about starting up a youth group?"
At the time he might as well of asked how do you feel about voting Conservative? Don't want to was my initial reaction, but we said we would talk about it and let him know. So we talked about and decided why not give it a go - to the youth group that is , not voting Conservative (although after 2 years of Labour...) .
Reasons for changing our mind ?
- There was a need for an older range youth group.
- God would take care of our concerns.
What were our concerns?
- After a week of dealing with children I doubted whether my sanity or health could withstand another set of children on a Friday night.
- I was and still am unsure of older children - they are big, lippy, etc
- What would it be called?
Well, we decided to call it 11 Up credit for the name goes to Anita - the creative side of our family!
To give you a little background of the club: the people who are running it are myself and Anita, with Gerald, Myrtle, and Mike Hayles as the regular helpers. Esther and Geoff do a craft night every 6 weeks or so. Alex Budd helps with the tuck shop. The main aim of the club was (and is) to turn people away from the world and to take Christ as their saviour, fine sounding words but in practice a hard thing to do. It is God who changes peoples hearts, but he obviously uses us. A subsidiary aim for the club was to provide a social need, but I have to continually remind myself of our main aim.
Who comes to the club? It is a mixture of children whose parents attend the church and those whose parents we have never seen. Quite a few of the children attend both Friday club and 11 up.
So, how has it gone? Pretty good really but if I had written this after the first 2 weeks I doubt I would have used the same words.
The first week was a bit of a disaster really, we didn't know a lot of the children and we were unsure as to how treat them. After that first week I remembered the first rule of my day job (teacher): that children need and positively want firm guidelines on what is acceptable and what isn't. The second week was better, the line of behaviour was drawn and we gradually chipped away at the more unacceptable behaviour from some of them. On one occasion a child had to be sent home and this seemed to have a sobering effect on the rest of them!
The structure of the evening remains fairly standard, we start with a song (getting boys to sing is not something that has been mastered!. Then an activity/talk by one of the adults, followed by a game maybe hockey, volleyball, crab football or a variety of games only known to Mike (he is your man if you are planning a party games evening). At the end of the evening we open up the tuck shop where just about all of them compete for how much rubbish they can stick down their necks in the minimum amount of time.
We take the children out for a social visit about once every ten weeks. The visits have included ten pin bowling, and a rotating meal, where the children go to one house for a first course, then another house for the second course. Both of these activities were successful in a) bonding the group together and b) showing some children that Christians can have fun!
Some weeks are obviously better than others in how well the children have listened, but there have been some great weeks where we have felt that the message has really got through.
We need your prayers for the club and in particular :
- More children to attend a perfect number would be 20 we currently have about 13/14.
- Children who are attending to turn away from the pressure to conform to the world and to make a commitment to Christ.
- Strength, wisdom and energy for all the helpers and leaders.
Graham Beeden.