Oct 2, 2015 - ever be in full time Christian youth work but the good Lord had other plans! ... it and the resources we'v
Urban Saints: An interview by Catherine Ellerby with Matt Summerfield, Chief Executive Introduction Matt Summerfield is chief executive of Urban Saints (previously known as Crusaders) which has been “helping young people live lives of faith, hope & love through Jesus Christ” since 1906. Here he talks about the Urban Saints movement and explains how it is still at the cutting edge of youth ministry today. He also reflects on the challenges of helping young people to engage with church and faith in today’s context and offers his own top tips for youth ministry. Please tell me about yourself and how long you’ve been in this role? I’ve worked at Urban Saints now for 15 years. Before that I was an IT manager for ten years as my day job but by night I was a youth pastor in my local church. I really had never imagined I’d ever be in full time Christian youth work but the good Lord had other plans! I started at Crusaders (later to become Urban Saints) in May 2000, then three years ago, I became senior pastor of a church which my Dad planted 34 years ago, Hitchin Christian Centre. I now spend a third of my time in the role of pastor and the other two thirds with Urban Saints. The two jobs overlap a lot of the time and I’m absolutely passionate about the local church. While at Urban Saints we’re looking at things on a national level, in my church, I’m seeing it in action. That helps to give everything we do at Urban Saints a real rootedness as we try things out and see how things work in real life situations. Can you tell me about Urban Saints and how long it’s been going? Urban Saints is essentially a missionary movement which is passionate about seeing young people come to know Jesus and have their lives transformed by following him. We do this firstly by resourcing the local church, equipping youth and children’s ministers and volunteers - we’re currently working with 1,350 churches. We also offer life-changing experiences for young people through events, holidays, training and overseas mission trips. Last year, 12,000 children and their leaders attended one of our holidays and experiences and we trained over 5,000 leaders. The story of Urban Saints began in 1900, when Albert Kestin, a missionary home on furlough met a group of boys out playing in a North London park on a Sunday afternoon. Asking them why they weren’t at Sunday School, they responded: “We don’t like it, Sir”. He promised to return the following week and start something for them which they would want to go to and enjoy – the first “Crusader” group. Although it wasn’t an easy journey and he upset some local churches by trying to engage with these young men, he remained pragmatic and positive. The wind of the Spirit got behind what he was doing and as a result, by 1906, 11 Crusader classes were running with around 600 boys meeting together each week. The story demonstrates that our roots are missional and we remain passionate about reaching those who 1 October 2015
are unreached. In 2006 we celebrated our Centenary year and in January 2007 we relaunched and rebooted with a new name: Urban Saints. “Changing the Future – one life at a time” is Urban Saint’s strapline. What does this mean in practice? It reflects what God is constantly reminding me; that Jesus invested his life in the ones and twos. We believe that God is about changing the future, our history and seeing increasing levels of healing and hope in people’s lives and in our world. If one youth leader gets alongside a young person, we’ll see people’s lives being changed one by one. How is Urban Saints resourced in terms of its staff and finance? We employ 50 Staff and a third of these make up our support team based in Luton; a third are based regionally and a third run our residential centre, the Westbrook Centre in the Isle of Wight. Most of those we work with, though, are volunteers in the different regions – through the Urban Saints network, we’re connected with over 15,000 volunteers. Around 60% of our income comes from subscriptions and fees paid for resources and holidays. The rest, about £1.1m, comes from legacies and donations and through fundraising. What does a typical day in your diary look like? There are four main aspects to the role which are usually reflected in any given day. Firstly my responsibility for the overall vision and culture of Urban Saints. This involves me understanding and clarifying our vision as it applies in different ways, developing it and communicating it to others. It’s also about developing the staff and supporting and encouraging them in their roles. Then there is an ambassadorial role, which means getting out and about. Fundraising is important too and I regularly meet with our major donors and grant making trusts to ensure that we have the funds we need to keep our ministry going. I’m also working on the Live Life 1-2-3 movement1 which focuses on intentional, accountable disciple-making relationships. Over the summer I was at Soul Survivor and the One Event to spread the word about it and the resources we’ve produced to support it - an app, a website and a book I’ve written, “Don't Make History, Change The Future" - we’ve already given away 60,000 of these. How does Live Life 1-2-3 work? Live Life 1-2-3 is all about trying to change the culture of disciple-making in the church – for young people and adults. It challenges people to identify one person who will be someone they learn from in their Christian life; two people they will do life with (peer accountability); and three people who they will be leading into a relationship with Jesus.
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http://www.livelife123.org/train-me/article/8
2 October 2015
What excites you most about your job? I’m excited by seeing the lives of young people changing as they come to and grow in faith. Seeing and hearing stories of how young people are responding to God is just amazing. I’m also excited by the many fantastic children’s and youth leaders who give up their time for those young people, cheering them on, loving them and guiding them; counting it a privilege to be there for them. What is the most challenging thing about the job? For me the challenge is that we have nine million young people in the UK today who only know Jesus as a swear word. If you lined them up they would stretch from John O’Groats to Land’s End three times. At the moment, the church is reaching only about 10% of these young people; the rest are not rejecting Christ out of rebellion but just because they don’t know. They are the first generation of children whose parents never went to church when they were young. If your parents don’t get it, then you won’t get it either. I believe that we are the watchmen and women over this generation and that’s part of what the Live Life 1-2-3 movement is about, trying to encourage people to reproduce their faith in our culture and in our churches. About 50% of churches have no youth and children’s work provision at all. We especially want to work with dioceses in those areas where there is no Gospel work with young people. Can you tell me how you do that? What can Urban Saints offer? We can help churches to do youth work better, through training and resources. “Energize”, for example is our web-based resource containing creative, adaptable materials to run meetings and train leaders2. It’s aimed at both outreach and disciple-making amongst 3 – 18+ year olds. Churches pay a monthly subscription to cover costs but where we have a partnership with a diocese there is a 20% reduction. Energize also gives us an opportunity to build up a network of relationships with churches. We also offer “My church has no kids”, a way of partnering with churches who have no children or youth work, but who are serious about doing something about that. Invited by the church, we usually run a seminar evening, to cast some vision and to try to dispel some of the myths about children and young people’s ministry e.g. “I’m too old”; “I don’t have time” or “Youth culture is too difficult”. These evenings often are small – it might be 3 people and a dog - but it doesn’t matter. We aim to bring people to a point of thinking: “I think I might be able to do this” and once a church wants to go ahead, then we help them with training and resources to get something going. This might take a while and it’s hard work but we’ll be there to support and encourage them along the way and it’s worth it.
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http://www.energize.uk.net/
3 October 2015
Lots of opportunities are opening up with some Anglican dioceses and we’d love to see this form part of an on-going strategy in the church. So far we have helped launch over 30 new groups. In Newcastle diocese, for example, where a pastor and his wife worked with us to start up a young people’s group in their vicarage. They felt ill equipped, but they went for it and five young people came, all with no connection to the church. Using Energize, every meeting included food, games and the Bible and the young people kept coming. At the end of a year, they asked the leaders if they could meet more often. It’s small but it’s making a difference in the lives of those young people. Yesterday I had an email from a church in Devon, thrilled to bits that their group of 22 primary school age children is strong and growing and that there are opportunities to build relationships with their families. They admitted they didn’t want to do it when it was tough, but they persevered and now those people are now being brought into the Kingdom of God. What about the place of prayer? Prayer is vital and we pray for eight of our groups per day which means that every group is prayed for twice a year - we ask for their prayer requests so we can pray specifically. Overall we have 1000 prayer supporters whom we consider part of the Urban Saints family. What would you say is the biggest challenge for the church in relation to young people? I’d say it is for us to build authentic relationships. Young people come if something is fun but will only stay if they make friends. Youth leaders can spend a lot of time thinking about the next fun thing - in the end it drains you. Authentic relationships are what matter. Church must also be relevant to young people when they come and we need to be looking out and addressing anything we put in the way of them coming to Jesus. When we present things with a lack of reality – young people can see through that straight away. The challenge is to show them not a perfect faith, but our vulnerability and be willing to admit that we too doubt sometimes and cry out to God, “where are you?” What would you say about the challenges for young people when engaging with church? To both the church and young people a key challenge is to “Be patient with each other”. To young people, I’d say, “ok, we know church might be naff, but we’re trying to figure it out - don’t give up.” To youth leaders I’d say, “Even when it feels like world war three is about to break out, keep on going.” I like the way 1 Corinth 15 is translated in The Message: “And don’t hold back. Throw yourselves into the work of the Master, confident that nothing you do for him is a waste of time or effort.” What would you say to any church wanting to reach out to young people, or to the wider church about how to encourage young people in their lives and faith? On average about 75% of people come to faith under the age of 20 - that makes sense as it’s during adolescent years that our worldview is shaped. I would say that we have to ask ourselves, is 75% of our mission effort going into helping young people meet Jesus? Do we recognise that this is a critical age to invest in? 4 October 2015
The stakes are high. If we don’t act, there won’t be a church in the future. The statistics speak for themselves. The numbers of young people involved in self-harm, struggling with mental illness, harmful sexual practices, bullying ....are just horrific. I’m an optimistic person, but when you realise for example the high proportion of 12 – 17 year olds watching internet pornography, you know that this has terrible implications for them and for society. Today, more than ever our young people need God’s Shalom which brings spiritual, but also emotional and physical well-being in the context of this culture. What would be your “top tips” for churches for engaging with young people and helping them grow in their faith? I have five tips or Essential Elements of Children and Youth Ministry, all beginning with the letter E, and then one beginning with R which binds them together – I call it 5 Es to the power of R: Enjoyment – fun isn’t the ultimate goal but it has to be there. Education – we mustn’t cop out of teaching the Bible. It’s not true that young people aren’t interested. We should teach it as God’s living story – it makes sense far more than any consumer or celebrity story. It’s important to find relevant and creative ways of telling that story which engage with young people. Experience – We believe in a God who can be experienced – whether that’s through prayer, contemplation, incense or a silence liturgy – it’s amazing how when we can engage young people in spiritual exercises “something happens”. I’ve seen 60 young people lying on a floor chewing over the verse “Be still and Know that I am God”, and respond by saying “I felt really peaceful”. They don’t often have the chance to be still, they live life at 90 miles per hour. Or, sometimes singing a song, something wells up; that’s a chance to say to them, “just maybe that’s God.” Empowerment – We have to get them busy in the Kingdom of God to move from being a spectator to a participant. When I was 17 and someone asked me to be a youth leader, I felt utterly helpless but God broke my heart for young people. I realised I couldn’t do it unless I got on my knees and asked God. That’s something I’m still realising now. In our church we’re always looking out for ways of empowering young people – having them on the hosting team, in the worship, praying for people, when they’re older, helping with the children’s work. Not just a token role, taking the offering for example…… Josiah was the King of Judah at the age of seven so we should let our children have a real role in church. Example – We are the family of God. Young people need to see Christ in us including in our failure and brokenness. We need to show them “I’m vulnerable but I’m still holding on to God – I really am.” The R stands for Relationship – which binds all the Es above together. 1 Thessalonians 2 v 8 says: “We loved you so much …..that we gave up our lives for you…” for youth leaders, that may often translates “… that we love you even when you drive us absolutely mad…” It also means that if we are serious about seeing lives changed we need to give time. It’s about inviting them over for a meal; going out for coffee; and opening up our lives to them which may 5 October 2015
include (as has happened to me) letting them see how I how I react in my own house when my toddler has a tantrum at a meal time years ago If we have all the Es and no Relationship, then we might as well forget it. That’s the thing. One church I know is really traditional and some would say “naff”, but young people go there, because they feel so loved and accepted that it’s like a family. For me this re-rendering of 1 Corinthians 13 sums it up: If I put on a great multi-media event for young people every month but have no love, or If I understand everything there is to know about youth culture but have no love, or If my church provides lively relevant worship to young people but have no love, or If I run a fantastic youth programme every week that tackles the issues that young people face but have no love, or If I empower young people to lead peer-led cell groups but have no love, or If I take my youth group to a huge Christian festival every year but have no love, or If I go into all the schools and run assemblies and lunch events but have no love, or If I provide training for those working with young people to help them excel but have no love. If I have no love – I am nothing but an irritating noise in the ear of God
Further information For further information, please contact Matt Summerfield at
[email protected] - follow on twitter @livelife123org and check out www.livelife123.org
6 October 2015
