 |
 | |
 |
||
|
Evangelism
to young people in Norwich and surrounding areas, and equipping others
for evangelism to young people
| ||
 | | |
|
| |
|
||
|
Evangelism
to young people in Norwich and surrounding areas, and equipping others
for evangelism to young people
| ||
| | |
Here is the July 2004 e-Bulletin from NYFC. Please accept
our apologies for its late delivery, this was due to a combination of technical
factors beyond our control (don't ask Mark about NTL!) and staff absence due
to holidays an Soul In The City.
| Once we share the excitement of welcoming a new staff member: Danny Doran-Smith- Full Story |
| As ever we have our regular feature, 'Thoughts from the Director's Chair' - Full Story |
| Despite his short time in post our brand new night club worker, DJ Matt, has already had some exciting opportunities - Full Story |
| As we approach the summer it seems appropriate to review some of this years happenings, so we present our look back on Fridays, F2, FMAWD & Fusion! - Full Story |
| Yet another new face, but this time it's a trustee, Sarah Mintey - Full Story |
| Rebecca has a quick update on the schools work - Full Story |
| And finally, the 'Virtual Back Page' contains an interesting miscellany of things, from dates to Self-Assessment hints, as well as some prayer pointers - Full Story |
We hope you enjoy our new format e-Bulletin. As ever, we want this to be a useful piece of information for you to stay in touch with what's going on in NYFC, and we would really appreciate your feedback on the new format, good or bad. So please, let us know your thoughts by emailing bulletin@norwichyfc.co.uk
 |
 |
On the 6th June another Fusion worker started! He’ll be based on the Heartsease estate in Norwich. Our partners on this project are Witard Road Baptist Church and St Francis Anglican church. Below he tells you about himself.
“Hi! My name is Danny Doran-Smith and I am the new Fusion worker for the Heartease area.
“I am from a town in Warwickshire called Rugby. Two years ago I left bible college and for the last year I have worked full-time as a Youth Evangelist in my home church. I am married to Kate, who is originally from Liverpool and we have a son named Tyler. We also have another baby on the way, he or she is due on November the 3rd. My life has been a real journey of highs and lows (with and without God), but that is a long story and will have to be kept for another time! I love to spend time with God and enjoy most things! Just ‘life’ mainly, and that’s what I have through Jesus Christ! I’m excited to be here working as a Fusion Worker for NYFC and I believe this is the right place for me at this time. Nothing gets me more excited than being used by God. I love being released to take impossible action to accomplish the vision God has laid before me. My mission is to see young people coming to know Jesus Christ as their Lord and Saviour and connecting with Him, in my experience - it is the only way!”
These are exciting times for Norwich Youth for Christ. It seems that every bulletin contains ever more exciting news about what God is doing through our ministry with young people. As a staff team we were sharing together recently and the view was that God is definitely up to something! It seems that after a couple of years of preparation, of building foundations, things are on the move. We give God glory for that and look forward to what the future may hold. There is a sense of adventure, of entering uncharted territory. We’d love you to come with us!
May I also take this opportunity to share with you that Mark and Naomi are expecting their first baby in November.
We are in the process of confirming our budget for next year. With new staff in place, others on the horizon and as we mentioned last time, an increase in our salary scales, we are setting a budget that is likely to be £100,000 bigger than last year and over £1/4 million. WOW! Praise God for the way we have grown as an organisation and for the way we have increased our predictable income.
These are exciting times for us and we appreciate all your support. Without you we would be unable to do the amazing work with young people that we do. We would ask that you continue to stand with us, and especially at this time, would you consider whether you could support us more or if you have friends who might want to support us financially? The best advert for us as an organisation is you our supporters! With an increase in budget and the traditional barrenness of the summer months now is a great time to give!
The significance of our budget isn’t just it’s size but the impact that it brings to young people with the gospel. By this time next year we could easily have 14 employed staff working with numerous volunteers creatively discipling young people and pointing them to Jesus and enabling them to live whole lives.
Don’t forget a new feature of our website is that you can now give securely on line. Go to our website and click on the obvious button that says ‘Give now‘ (or give right now by clicking the button below!). Giving in this way can be anonymous if you want it to.
 |
Our new Nightclub worker has began his first month here in Norwich, known around here as ‘DJ’ Matt due to his skills behind the decks. Before DJ came along, Norwich Youth for Christ had already established 10 years of Clubwork, which served the major clubs, Ikon and Time. The pastoral advisors hung out in the clubs giving support and help to many people. |
Now it’s the start of something new here, perhaps further partnering with Matthew Project. It’s exciting being on the edge with God. Before Matt got here a 15 year old gave him this word as prophecy:
Psalm 37: “but if you trust in the lord, the land will be yours.”
I believe that this work will harvest many into God’s Kingdom and its already starting. Just the other Saturday I was asked to DJ in Alley Cats bar to a party of clubbers. The Holy Spirit through me, was ‘in the house’ and people were up for talking about God after my DJ set, which people danced to with total freedom.
Here’s how you can help:
If any of the following criteria apply email: clubwork@norwichyfc.co.uk
It was around this time last year that we announced changes to how Fridays would be run. The changes came after a lot of thinking and praying about what might be the best thing to do with the event - it seemed to be going through a trough in terms of attendance and support from churches. As you may remember we decided to make Fridays a monthly event, and introduce F2 as a companion event, but with a more studied focus. When the changes were announced at Fridays we were met with a range of reactions, from surprise and raised eyebrows to outright bitterness and hostility! A strong sense of community has always been one of Fridays strengths, and it seemed as though some young people were concerned that might be lost under the new system.
Looking back, however, I am pleased to say that the changes have indeed worked for the better: attendance at Fridays is up and more consistent, with numbers stable at between 100 and 120; F2 has achieved the aim of giving deeper input to those young people that want it (and the numbers for F2 have been up to 40, double my expectations); and the sense of community seems stronger to me than ever before.
You can download and print your own copy of the new flyer with dates for Fridays next year. The theme for the cards, and next year's Fridays, is 'Live Loud.' I feel the time is right to call for even more whole-hearted Christian living from our young people, and to give them passion and vision for what God can do when they make themselves available. (By coincidence, or maybe God-incidence, I discovered that the theme at Soul Survivour this year is very similar, but only after I'd sent the cards to the printers!).
Dates for F2 will be announced seperately.Keep an eye on the website.
FMAWD (Fridays Music And Worship Day) has been and gone, so here's a short report of what happened.
Around 20 people joined us for the day at Wroxham Road Methodist Church (many thanks to them for the use of the building), representing a variety of backgrounds and ages. The event started, appropriately enough, with some time spent praising God, before getting into an overview of worship through the Old and New Testaments.
After a short break to take on tea and refresh heads, the attendees had a choice of three seminars: Being a Band, Vocal Workshop, and Exploring The Alternatives. The first of these focussed on thinking about what it means to function as a band leading worship, both spiritually and musically. We were also able to demonstrate some of the right and wrong ways of doing things (though some band members could not bring themselves to play badly!). The Vocal Workshop was led by Fliss and gave some very practical advice on singers working together to better serve their congregations. Finally the Exploring the Alternatives session considered how we can create space for people who don't connect with singing as worship and provided some chewy thoughts for those who attended.
After another short tea stop, we continued with a guest speaker, Ian Savory, who helped us to realise the importance of maintaining our relationship with Jesus before we try to lead others into a closer relationship. There was then a concluding session on creative arrangements and writing, before we finished the day with the final act of worship.
FMAWD was a good step in our quest to equip Christian young people for service in the church. Over the coming year we will be offering more training on subjects designed to help churches make the most of the young people in their congregations, and we hope that these trained and equipped youth will be given proper opportunities to serve the wider body of Christ.
As you may know, Rob works in both Poringland and Acle. Over the last few issues we have focused on Poringland, so now it's Acle's turn! Rob began in Acle in September 2003, here he tells the story.
"I started with a few clubs on the back burner waiting to be re-launched after closing over the summer. These included NRG (High school discussion/social group) and Rock Solid. There was a small team of committed volunteers struggling to keep a drop-in club open on Friday evenings over the summer holidays 7:30-10pm at the local Methodist church. I say a committed team as they got there at 7pm and stayed until 10:30pm onwards clearing away."Unfortunately the Revd. Roy Coppack became seriously ill and died shortly after I was appointed. He is greatly missed and remembered. Roy was the person with the drive behind the project from what I have heard. So, all things were now in a muddle!
"I started looking at the project and realised there were some gaps and that the existing clubs were no longer fulfilling their ideals. This meant some radical changes. You may have heard the phrase, 'The bigger the ship the longer it takes to turn.' Well this was a big ship. To be honest, maybe I did jump in with both feet, making changes too fast, although some needed to be changed due to lack of leaders or just duplicating the work. I started to look around at the projects again and re-grouped the volunteers and wrote a new vision, not much different from the one the previous youth leader had, just more detailed. The volunteers we have are fantastic, my vision is just bigger than the number of volunteers we have, without them we would not have a project this size.
"I met with a local Curate and we now run the NRG discussion group in the local school on Thursday afternoons 3:30-4:30pm; I needed to change from Wednesdays due to only one person coming and more said they would come on a Thursday; we had a 300% growth the first week, and is still growing. The reason for this they have said is due to it being a more structured discussion led group than a social group. The school is very supportive.
"The Rock Solid club aimed at those aged 11-14years actually had young people aged 14-17 years! I have been training them with the volunteers who have a high profile in the community to be young leaders. I plan to visit the local primary school to invite the upper two years to a Rock Solid launch, to see if there is a need for the club.
"As I said earlier, we have a number of young leaders. These young leaders wanted to know more about God, so I started a cell group and called it Powerhouse, not the first time we have used that name. We get 5-8 young people attend on a Thursday evening 7:30-9pm. This group is also involved in church services, Deanery youth services, setting up and taking down various equipment for clubs, running games, promoting events and much, much more. It is amazing how much can be achieved with a core group of young people.
"The final and largest project is the Friday night drop-in held at the Methodist church hall, this is a first contact club. This has free entry and includes a pool table, PS2 and 4 controllers with Fifa, tennis etc. I have changed the time of this club to run 7:30-9:30pm as we are short of volunteers and running for 2 ½ hours on a Friday evening as well as 30 minutes set up and take down time is a long night if you have been working all week. We used to get 15-20 young people, we now see 25-40 young people each night, from various backgrounds. I also have the management committee on the rota and local clergy to help with numbers, the management committee were behind the change of time. As for those over 18 years of age, I have just begun mentoring them, this has been very beneficial to the project and the young person themselves, another part of the project I would like to develop in the future.
"We have also held a "children in need" event to raise money, joined with the Acle Youth Club for a two week activity project and community service programme in July/August, they also run a club on a Friday evening, so it makes sense to work together more closely. We took part in the 24 hour famine, attended Byond Blief and may go to Living Waters. The young leaders are were also involved in leading activities at the Deanery youth event in Acle. Some of the young people have also started attending "Fridays" and "F2".
"As you can see we have quite a few projects running and it is a busy and rewarding time squeezing them all into my 20 hours a week. How do we do it? - We work together with other agencies and clubs. There are volunteer needs so if you feel you can help with any of the above projects then please contact me at the NYFC office."
Volunteer vacancies are:
Charlie Kerr, Curate of St Peter Mancroft, in Norwich shares his story of Rock Solid.
The youth situation at St Peter's has been a little uncertain over the last few years. Without boring you with the details, Youth Group has had various incarnations over the last two or three years - some successful, some less so - but we arrived at a situation last summer where we could sit down and decide where we wanted to go in terms of our youth work. Being in the city centre and not too distant from the Norwich Youth for Christ offices, I had become aware of the Youth for Christ Rock Solid resources. We'd decided to aim a new youth group towards our Choristers aged from about 10 upwards, and these resources were for the 11-14 bracket, so it was almost a perfect fit. The other attraction of the resources is that they were comprehensive; part of the problem with the previous group was that I found myself week on week scraping around for ideas for games and themes etc. It was lonely and demoralizing. Rock Solid takes all the hard work out of running a Youth group; it gives you themes each week, loads of simple and amazingly imaginative and fun games, a small shopping list of required items, it has a pause for thought section for discussion and it even includes a small talk with excellent examples and stories. You can probably tell by now that I'm a bit of a fan of this material…!
What I hadn't realized or expected is that we would be obliged to undergo a 5 week training program with Youth for Christ before we started the group. I remember thinking: seems a bit heavy, really necessary? I've better things to do with my time. In fact the complete opposite was true, it was the perfect springboard for starting the club. Once a week for 5 weeks we met with two workers from Youth for Christ, and, in a systematic, gradual and fun way we went through the basic steps of setting up a good foundation for a youth group. I cannot praise the system enough, both the two workers Rob and Matthew, or the way it set us up perfectly for the task ahead. The main emphasis, really, was to create a strong sense of team and purpose before we started, and it worked a treat.
Now we just had to find some young people. This proved surprisingly difficult. We had sent invitations to Choristers and young people from the baptism list, but for our first club only three turned up. We're in a strange situation at St Peter's because we are in the city centre, and people come from all round Norwich, so we don't have some of the more natural networks of communication for people to find out that things are happening. Numbers continued to be very small - around 2 to 4 - and we tried not to become disheartened. The quality of the work was actually very high and the young people did seem to enjoy themselves, but we couldn't help but wonder whether we could be reaching out to more young people. At a church sleep-over at half-term which was well attended, we asked our young people if there were ways we could improve the club, to make it more attractive. The conclusion was that they wanted to meet on Sunday afternoons at 3pm instead of after school on a Tuesday, and they wanted to meet weekly rather than fortnightly. Thankfully our leader and her husband were keen to oblige. This also coincided with news that there were some young people at the Cathedral, recently confirmed, who met on a Sunday morning during the service, but didn't have a youth club as such. The Cathedral were more than happy to join forces. Numbers rose to about 6 to 8, and the sessions became much more vibrant, fun and noisy. For our first club of this term we had 11 young people who turned up, and it really has a sense of momentum and feels sustainable.
The main thing from my point of view is that it is GREAT FUN. I don't turn up every week, but if I could I would, because the games are brilliant and you just want to join in the whole time. I imagine that if I'm enjoying it, then there's a really good chance young people will too. A committed team has been fundamental to us as well - people who enjoy working together and share their goals - prayer time before the club has been very important. It was also very important for us not to lose heart, although it was hard at times; it took a while for us to get the structures of the club right for our context. In fact I was asked to write this article about 4 months ago, but I declined because it would have made fairly depressing reading. By the grace of God, however, there is now a really sustainable set up. Overall it's been up and down, but we're definitely on the up at the moment and, despite set backs, it's been great fun and very rewarding working to share the joys of God's kingdom with young people.
As well as new staff we are also pleased to announce a new trustee. Sarah Mintey has recently joined us in this capacity.
"I am delighted to join Norwich Youth for Christ as a trustee. For the past 10 years I have been working in education and believe that it is vital to deliver the Christian message in a relevant style; Norwich Youth for Christ are just the vehicle for delivery! I am passionate about helping young people realise their potential and believe the only way this can be achieved is by helping them develop their own set of beliefs. I pray that the young people of today, our next generation start to bring God into the equation, so that Christ can once more get a hold of this nation."
Sarah is an answer to prayer, as we had been asking God for a trustee from an educational background. Trustees play a vital role in our organisation and hold significant responsibility. Simply put though, their role is to 'guard and guide' the ministry of NYFC. If you would like more information about becoming a trustee please contact the office.
The last few months have been really encouraging! A non-Christian boy from one of the CU's I run decided to go to church and take his brother with him! Hewitt high school have asked me to start a Christian union! And I spent a day at Blythe-Jex with a Christian dance company 'Springs' working with the year 10 dance group! I have used four exclamation marks already! (five)
The Christian Union at Hewitt may be hard to start as I am unaware of any Christian young people at the school. This does not mean there are not any, and if you know of any please give me a ring at the office.
'Springs' dance company were at Blythe-Jex on Friday 11th June. It was a really great day. The GCSE dance group is really big, which makes it hard for the teacher to help them work on their dance pieces. 'Springs' being there was great as there was enough of them that they were able to split up and spend time with each dance piece. The groups worked really hard and achieved so much for their GCSE dance pieces. In the afternoon 'Springs' showed a short bit of a dance which illustrated the Christian life and how Christians sometimes make it look more restricting and harder than it actually is. This was a great opportunity for them to share their faith with the GCSE dance group.
Prayer DatesIt would be great to see you at our prayer evenings. They last for
strictly one hour from 7:30. It's a great opportunity to meet and pray
with the team who value this kind of support. The venue is Holy Trinity
Church Hall, Cambridge Street, Norwich. Put these dates in your diary
now! Studentdom |
Dates31 Aug - 2 Sep NYFC Team retreat 3 Sep Fridays 1 Oct Fridays FranceThe Fridays band are off to France again this October. Please pray for them as the prepare for this trip which includes learning worship songs in french! They will be working with the local churches and young people. Last year God really used them to bless the church over there, which in turn blessed the band. Proverbs 3 v 5 & 6 11v25 If you feel you can support us financially for this trip, this would
be a great blessing to us. An Idea from Rob...If you are in South Norfolk can I recommend you contact Sam Mason at
Norfolk Youth and Community Service. His number is 01379 642425. Why
you might ask? Norfolk Youth and Community Service have funding for
trial events for clubs, including circus skills, table tennis, team
building, basketball competitions. I have recently had the circus skills
at Poringlands @mosphere club and it was fantastic, we shall be arranging
other activities with them. Gift AidIf you give to NYFC and pay income tax, you can help us reclaim extra money from the government by completing a Gift Aid Form. You only need to do this if you have not already done one for us. Contacting UsIf you want to email us our addresses are: office@norwichyfc.co.uk If you prefer the more traditional approach, then our postal address is: Norwich Youth For Christ, 3 Brigg Street, Norwich, NR2 1QN Our telephone number is 01603 620678
|
Any Questions?Q. Who are
you people? Q. Why have
you sent me this? Q. This is
a great piece of communication, but why do I get this as well as a paper
copy? Q. I don't
want anymore of these sent to me? Q. Actually
I've changed my mind, I don't want to stop receiving this, in fact I
want all my friends to get it! How do I do this? If you prefer the more traditional approach, then our postal address is: Norwich Youth For Christ, 3 Brigg Street, Norwich, NR2 1QN Our telephone number is 01603 620678 Check out our website – www.norwichyfc.co.uk, including our brand new feature, the forum, your chance to interact with NYFC staff and volunteers. |
|
