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A church that has “by youth for youth” as part of its spiritual DNA is going to come across as rather amateurish at times. We have, long ago, made our peace with that. The PowerPoint won’t necessarily have all the slides in the right order, the Gospel reading won’t always be read from the same version that’s on screen, the drama often won’t be polished and of the highest quality – and that’s ok. We would rather stay true to our guiding principles than sacrifice our young people’s self-esteem on the altar of the pursuit of quality for its own sake.

Recently, we have come to realize that God is an amateur too. This doesn’t mean that God isn’t good at what He does. On the contrary, He’s brilliant at all He does, but by definition, a professional is someone who does what they do as a profession, usually to earn a living. This is perhaps most often seen in the world of sports where amateurs often turn professional only when they can secure sufficient funding. By contrast, an amateur plays sport for the sheer love of it. The origin of the word is from the Latin “amare” and means “to love”.

Why did God create people in the first place? The best answer I’ve ever heard to this question is that God already had one Son, and He loved Him so much, He wanted a bigger family. Wow! We exist because of God’s love! Everything God does flows from love. Love is not even something primarily that God does, though He does do it, rather, love is something God is. The most powerful sentence ever penned in the English language was written by John the Apostle and is 3 words long: ‘God is love’. Love is God’s essence, His very being. God can ‘be’ love rather than just express it because He is not singular, but rather, He is Trinitarian. The beautiful thing about the Christian Faith is that we are all invited into this ever-loving, ever self-giving, relationship that God already has with Himself, for all eternity.

At our youth church, we shall continue to strive for excellence in all that we do. We believe that is part of our sacrificial act of worship, to never be satisfied with anything less than our best for God. But when we get things wrong, as we inevitably do, we take a great deal of comfort from the truth that God loves us anyway. Everything He ever does is based on His love for us, and as long as we keep our love for Him at the centre of all we do, we can’t go too far wrong.

“Dear friends, let us live one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love.”
1 John 4:7-8

Mr Pountain
Head of Religious Education / Director of Spirituality