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This summer, my family and I had the pleasure of visiting Paris to watch some of the Olympic games. Over a 3-day period we saw some of the boxing, the medal matches of the rugby 7s and, a personal favourite of mine, a day’s judo! At all three events, the passion of the French crowd was contagious, the atmosphere in the venues, assisted by all kinds of clever and humorous software on screen to stir up the crowd with lights and music, was electric, and the skill on display from the athletes was world class – as one would expect.

Since then, I have reflected that as good as that was in Paris, it is the polar opposite of what we are trying to build with our youth church. The Olympic Games of course, come round once every four years and are, by definition, a spectacle. We are gathering as a youth church every week during term time and even if we wanted to, couldn’t replicate that level of fanfare and showmanship, or come anywhere close. And we definitely don’t want to.

In thinking about this, I am reminded of my in-laws from South Wales. When our boys, now 21 & 18, were little, they would visit us during school holidays to give us “a rest”. We were then, and still are grateful for this kindness. The problem was, grandma and grandad let our kids do whatever they wanted. (Perhaps that’s the privilege of grandparents!) They would feed them until they were fit to burst with all kinds of sweet treats and fizzy drinks, let them splash water all over the bathroom and even, on more than one occasion, encourage them to slide down the stairs on “slides” made of mattresses from their beds. And then they would clear off back down to South Wales, leaving my wife and I to pick up the pieces. Our boys loved grandma and grandad, but my wife and I were the ones doing the hard work of parenting, making ourselves unpopular by saying ‘no’ repeatedly, round the clock all day every day.

As we look forward to another term of our youth church flourishing, a term that includes a visit from at least two Bishops on separate occasions, and with some great events planned: our 3rd anniversary celebration is coming up in November, and we shall be celebrating our pupils achieving their Archbishop of York young leaders’ awards, we reaffirm our commitment to avoid at all costs the mothers-in-law of church life appearing on our guest speaker list. We work very hard at whom we partner with to speak to our young people and opt for only those who share our spiritual DNA. We are keen to avoid those one-hit-wonders, the grandparent figures from my analogy if you like, who sometimes travel from a long distance, promise the earth often primarily to boost their own popularity, only to disappear never to be seen again, leaving us to cash the cheque of our pupils’ unrealistically high expectations. We are in this for the long haul, week in, week out, for the sake of our pupils and all involved in our youth church. At the start of a new academic year, may we extend to you a warm invitation to join us any first or third Wednesday of each month, in our main assembly worship hall, for one of our public acts of worship. It won’t be as entertaining as the Olympics, but we guarantee it will be worth coming.

“Whether you turn to the right or to the left, your ears will hear a voice behind you, saying, ‘This is the way; walk in it.’”
Isaiah 30:21

Mr Pountain
Head of Religious Education / Director of Spirituality