Diversity

Some seven years ago my wife got a job as a youth worker for a church and asked me if I would run a discussion group for teenagers. At the time there were 4 teenagers who played paper hockey and other games on a Sunday night with no spiritual input beyond a prayer at the start of the group. I said that if they wanted a discussion group I would happily run it but I had no interest in being involved in the group as it was.

The following week I meet with the group and told them what the discussion group would be like and asked them if they were interested. They said “no” and as far as I was concerned that was that. Two weeks later they were short of a leader for the Sunday evening meeting and my long suffering wife asked me to step in. An informal discussion followed with one of the members on freewill and determinism (they never picked easy topics!), and I said we could get together and talk about it on the following Monday with pizza at our flat. This group developed and grew into the discussion group, and with time membership increased.

Seven years later, and the group has had 19 members. The members now just get together in the University holidays and are mostly 20+ years of age. Many of them came to the group without a faith and developed one through the group; four joined us just for a short while, and left fairly quickly.

Now one of those “young people” is working for me during the summer holidays as my assistant. On the way to work we discuss theology, and he will be a Godparent to my child. The relationship changed with time, as did the group, moving from a discussion group led by us to one led by a different member of the group each week, and taking on the form of a “co-learners” group. The young man who is working with me now in his second year at theological college, another studying Philosophy and Ethics, one of the group training as a paramedic, another is manager of Waitrose. Several have completed or are currently on gap years working with children who don’t have the same benefits they have had. The development we have seen in them over the time the group has been running is huge.

I don’t want this to sound like we have shaped these young people – I’m not trying to blow my own trumpet. All we have done is been around, offered opportunities to meet with God and offered a little guidance, lots of encouragement and the occasional dose of reality! They have developed the strong bonds between themselves, the commitment to the various churches they attend, the love for God that each of them share and the concern for the wider world. We are just proud and privileged to have had the opportunity to be part of their lives (and surprised that this time has lasted for so long!)

The biggest challenge has been in making sure that we don’t imprint our particular brand of theology or belief on the group’s members, but allow each of them to meet with God in the way they need to. We have Conservative Evangelicals, Charismatics, Liberals, and members who are most comfortable finding God on a starry night or a rainy afternoon, yet week after week they sit together and discuss the Bible, abortion, adoption, war, criminal justice, and everything in between. They share their hopes, their fears, their wishes for the future and their struggles.

As I think of this little band, I consider the Anglican church in its current crisis; a situation where people of different opinions and traditions struggle to sit around the same table and recognise that they each worship the same God; that each of their faiths are real and worthwhile. We don’t always agree in our group, and when we don’t we tell each other, and explain why, but never is a voice raised, never is a person put down or insulted. During the week, members of the group socialise together, and we are expecting at least one marriage in the next few years. The group has discussed homosexuality at a time when one of the group members was questioning their own sexuality. We discussed women in leadership when one of the young women began exploring working as an Army Chaplain and many other sensitive issues which group members were experiencing. In all these cases there have been some for and some against, but I believe each person has felt respected, valued and loved. They have always been able to separate the issue from the individual.

So, maybe in the lead up to the Lambeth Conference, we should invite the Bishops to come, join us and study the Bible with us, as diverse as we are; maybe our young people could offer them an example of how to live together as a Christian community, with widely differing opinions, but “one faith, one church, one Lord”.