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Recently a life-long friend gave me a duplicated newsletter which was full of pretensions about the role young people play in the Church. I cringed because it carried my name as the author. It was written many years ago when I was barely out of my teens. It was my first venture at helping to run a youth club. I was to go on and be involved in several more. Some more successful than others. Eventually, I left this important work to others and perhaps I have let it slip in my priorities. I remember a Diocesan Youth Officer saying that parishes are full of guilty people who have gained a lot from being members of youth clubs and youth groups but who have shirked any responsibility for work with young people, preferring to leave that sort of thing to others. Maybe I stand today as one such ‘guilty bystander’!
In today’s Gospel Jesus took a child and said “whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me…” You can change the word ‘child’ to ‘young person’ and it means the same. Over the years the Church has done a great deal of work with young people and the Church of England can be justifiably proud of its involvement in youth education—through church schools, further education chaplaincies, Sunday Schools and in Diocesan Youth Work. The deanery has just appointed a part-time Youth Adviser (who will also be part-time Chaplain to Davenant School). The funding for the Church part has come from The Archbishops’ Council who have made a generous grant. All this is good but we can’t rest on our laurels, especially if they are actually somebody else’s.
Of course, not everybody can be involved in youth work. I marvel at those who do it and are committed to it. This is a real outpouring of faith into good works—something the writer of the Epistle of James says is vital. I see this commitment and faith at work in ‘The Box’ and those involved deserve our admiration, encouragement and prayers—as well as our financial support, of course. That may be enough by way of involvement but our support should not be passive. It’s easy to be happy others are doing what we might find hard to do. But underlying this work is a belief that young people actually matter and that they have important things to contribute to Society as well as to our Church community. People often say that this work is important because the young people are the ‘future’ Church. Actually, No! They are the present Church and their value is not about investing in the future but, as today’s Gospel reminds us, in welcoming them as if they are Christ. Even those who are not church members. Even, dare I say it, those who have been hanging around outside over the summer! They are real people with a real need for acceptance of them as they are, for who they are.
There will always be a ‘generation gap’. We don’t bridge it by being ‘trendy’ or patronising. We begin to bridge it when we are simply ourselves and even more when, like Jesus, we care about the young; accepting and loving them and even learning from them. Older people don’t have a monopoly of wisdom. Some of the young people who go to The Box have an experience of life we can’t even imagine. We may not feel able to get alongside them but we can support those who do. That in itself is a way of supporting the young and showing that they matter.