On Monday night, 58 people, representing 25 churches from all 4 boroughs of the Black Country gathered together to explore the opportunities and challenges facing youth work across our region.
It was a wonderful night, with a real sense of ease and familiarity in the room as people shared openly both the positive things that God is doing with youth ministry where we each serve, as well as being honest about the shared challenges we are all facing. Together we remembered again that there is something so powerful about knowing you are not alone in the battles you face, or in the victories you are seeing.
Together we are stronger.
The need to assess together the situation facing youth work is ever-growing.
In many ways, our churches are facing a generational crisis. Whilst some may have young people regularly connecting to their youth work each week, for most churches in this area, that is simply not the case. Maybe this has been coming for many years, but we believe that our God remains in charge, and can turn what seem to be huge challenges into real opportunities.
It is only together that we can breakthrough these generational challenges. For the city walls to be re-built, it takes us all to do our part. We cannot do that alone.
Therefore, it’s our intention to host a similar night again sometime in January. We will let you know in due course what date that will be and hope that even more people will be able to join us again as we journey and explore TOGETHER how God is speaking into and working through all of the ministry on offer to the next generation in our region.
If you’d like to kept in the loop regarding future gatherings of youth workers, please email info@loveblackcountry.org.uk and we will add you to our growing database of people who serve in this way.