The Grove Is On Fire

What On Earth Is A CAF?

Once upon a time, in a country ruled over by a good and wise queen, someone realised that lots of children and young people were involved with lots of different youth projects, schools, and social service departments, but those youth projects, schools, and social service departments weren't doing a very good job of talking to each other about the young person, and when they did talk to each other they used a different language, with funny words in it that no-one else understood. Words like "threshold", "empowerment", and "integrated support across the continuum of needs and services". Sometimes the youth projects, schools, and social service departments didn't even know the child they were working with was involved with other youth projects, schools, and social service departments! It was all a bit silly. So this someone decided that a new way of working should be created, where, if people needed help working with a certain child, they could find out who else was working with the child, and they could all speak the same language. And the new way of working that this someone created was called the Common Assessment Framework or CAF for short. And this someone who created it? They had a name too, and their name was the Department for Education and Skills, but they soon passed the role over to the Children's Workforce Development Council because they had other things to do.

At least, that's my way of explaining what this magical beast known as the Common Assessment Framework is. This is how the CWDC says it:

"The CAF is a shared assessment tool for use across all children's services and all local areas in England. It aims to help early identification of need and promote co-ordinated service provision."

Which clearly isn't as fun or helpful as my way of defining it. Essentially it's a tool to try and make everyone speak the same language and work together to help a child who has needs that aren't being met and what it boils down to in practice, is a form, a flowchart¹, and an agreement to share information, all of which can be explained in this handy example below. But before we get to that handy example, why on earth do you need to know this? Well, if you're involved in any youth or children's work that also involves government services (like say a school) or the larger of the voluntary services (like say London Youth) this is the way they're going to have to go when trying to get other agencies to work with children they know. The CWDC says "every practitioner working with children, young people and families should understand the Government outcomes for all children, and know about the CAF or how to complete on themselves" which again, clearly isn't as easy to understand as my way of explaining it. Didn't I say that I was getting to a handy example?

Your name is Dwayne. You have a child who is called Dwayne Jnr and he's 13 years old. Dwayne Jnr isn't possessed with any criminal tendencies, but he does have a particular lack of respect for his teachers and an inability to do long division. This can mostly be blamed on your laissez-faire parenting skills which somehow you self-justify as 'empowering'. But enough about you. Dwayne Jnr's form tutor Derek decides that Dwayne has un-met needs that Derek can't meet on his own. Derek needs more help, so, with the consent of Dwayne Jnr and Dwayne (that's you remember) he checks whether someone has already done a CAF form, and if not fills one in. This CAF form details everything of note in Dwayne Jnr's life at the minute. At the end of this form Derek decides, with both of you, what needs to change and how you're going to do it. One of these things is for Dwayne Jnr to stop being so rude in class, another is for you to stop being such a poor parent. He also writes down a list of other agencies you all would like to see involved. One of those is YouthBuzZ, a youth project that teaches kids to silently hum whenever they get angry with their teachers. This form is then sent off to those other agencies with a request to meet and form a team around Dwayne Jnr and also sent off to the local borough CAF officer. All those people then meet about Dwayne Jnr and say how they can help Dwayne Jnr. If you or Dwayne Jnr have problems during this then you just contact the lead professional, who is assigned by the team. That could be Derek or someone from another agency, like the senior youth worker at YouthBuzZ. He sorts everything out for you and your son. They work together, your son becomes a fittier, happier, and more productive child and you become a better parent. Success is achieved and if all continues to go to plan the team disbands knowing that their work is done.

From the perspective of YouthBuzZ, it'll look something like this. You get a CAF form and a request to meet around the child to offer him some provision. If you can, you say "yes, we'd love to". You having a meeting with Derek and whoever else is invited, state when you can offer to help Dwayne Jnr and let the lead professional inform Dwayne Jnr of this. At some point Dwayne Jnr starts accessing your service. You keep in touch with the lead professional and meet with everyone to review Dwayne Jnr's case every now and again. At some point you realise Dwayne's needs are being met, so the team disbands and the meetings stop, but you continue to support Dwayne as long as he needs it.

So you see, one form, one model of practice, and one agreement to share information. You can see the form for yourself at the every child matters website but ideally you'll never seen one in paper, they'll all be done online and it'd get sent off to all the relevant people via e-mail, thereby reducing faff. The form should only be filled in once, by anyone ever, after that it's stored with the CAF administrator and by contacting them you can find out whether or not a CAF form already exists and if it does exist you can find out who is working with the child already. You won't be able to see the CAF form though until the lead professional invites you to see it. Soon² they'll be an electronic system called Contactpoint³ which'll store basic data for every child in the country, including whether or not they have a CAF form, which if you're authorised you can look up the concerned child on directly and find out who is the lead professional. At the moment though, it's all being done by local boroughs, so if your child lives in Cornwall, you'd check them via the local Cornwall CAF administrator (who'd obviously have to know who you are first).

And that, is essentially it. If you want to do the filling in a CAF form part of the process yourself you'll need to be trained up by your local borough, but now if you receive one, you'll know what to do with it hopefully. Or when you're talking with your youth work friends you won't be so clueless about it all.

¹ Form and Flowchart are two of the four main elements of Hip-Hop. FACT.

² Soon as in "we're a government backed major IT project" not soon as in "soon".

³ Which is driving privacy lovers crazy, and which might be illegal under the new Human rights bill (but everything else seems illegal too under that bill so we can probably ignore it)

Youth Ministry As Manipulation

Seen bouncing around the internet at the moment are a series of posts by Darren at Digital Orthodoxy about youth ministry and manipulation. It's worth reading back through them but the one I think summarises the rest the best is Manipulative Youth Ministries 3.0 (and where all the quotes below are from). It's quite easy to read the various posts and think "oh my word, he's clearly wrong on the whole point of Jesus coming" and therefore dismiss it out of hand, but I found that as I've re-read what Darren's written I've found I agree with where I think he's coming from even if I really don't like the direction he's going to. His criticism does have a certain validity to it, so not wanting to ignore the assessment of our location just because the suggested future directions are towards a sharp cliff edge, here is a response.

His starting place is that any manipulation in youth ministry is a bad thing. Then he has two points, the first one is all ministry that has intentionality is manipulation (which is effectively all ministry); the second point is that the incarnation shows us another model. I have issues with those two point's but his basis is valid. This is how he words it:

It's not best practice to be manipulative, it just isn't, no matter how important you think your mission is, or the need to reach out to young people in order to turn them to faith."

I recognise there is a debate to be had there, but I'm just going to step out and agree with that as a statement; I think it holds up with the Bible, but I'm not going to explore that here and now because it's his two main points that I want to deal with.

So the first point Darren makes, any ministry that has any intentionality attached to it is manipulative, which, as every ministry pretty much has intention behind it, is every ministry. That's a fairly stunning statement to make but that's what he is saying:

Let's face it, the very second that we put an outcome to a relationship we're being manipulative. When we decide that we're in relationship with this bunch of young people in order to help them stop participating in graffiti, or when we enter into relationship with a kid with ADHD with the idea that they may become better behaved, or when we minister with a bunch of teens who are children of our congregation in order to see them become christian leaders. It's the addition of that third place that is manipulative.

What the argument seems to be here is this: You're making a relationship with a young person, but you're not doing it for the sake of the relationship, you're doing it for the sake of some other reason. This therefore is manipulative; you're lying about the relationship.

I don't think this is fair, or right. It presents itself in a "She's All That"¹ model. The relationship exists solely for some sneaky purpose and then can be cast away when the mission is done. Obviously in some ministry this is the case, but I hope no-one is arguing that that's a particularly awesome model. But what if instead the basis for the relationship is love, and any intention for that relationship is driven out of a love for that person, then surely that's not manipulation? To use one of the examples above, if I love this kid with ADHD then I will want to see them be better behaved, because that'll make them happier and it'll make my joy for them grow. Now this presupposes that we love those who we enter into relationship with first so our intentions for them arise out of that love, the problem with this is that we frequently, as youth workers, enter into a relationship with young people that starts with us being given a job description and a few days latter actually meeting them. But then we have to preach to ourselves that Christ has called us to love these young people, and we have to try and get our head and our hearts around the practicalities of loving them.

So, that's where I stake my first disagreement. You can be intentional inside of a relationship with a young person and not be manipulative. Heck, I'd take it a step further and say you can be persuasive inside of a relationship with a young person, as long as you're honest with them. I don't think you can say to a young person, "because I love you my intention is for you to hear the Gospel of Jesus Christ and believe in it, but I'm not going to try to persuade you it's true because I don't want to unduly influence you" without being a patronising moron.

The second point, and my second disagreement comes over what exactly the incarnation teaches us about how we should do youth ministry. Now, a slight aside is going to follow before we get to what Darren has to say. Incarnational youth ministry is one of my pet bug-bears² and has been for some time. This is what I wrote in an essay in 2005 on the subject:

If you've got hundreds of young people coming along to an after school club but you aren't getting them anywhere near Christ then what you need is either firm faith that you're "sowing the seeds" for the imminent revival that will magically convert them all or, if you're not a Pentecostal³, some way of making your work valid so you can feel like you're doing something valuable for the Kingdom of God. Enter incarnational youth ministry. The incarnational model of youth work ministry states that Christian youth work... brings a unique value to youth work in that Christian youth workers represent Christ to the young people, somehow acting almost as sacraments, communicating the presence of God to the young people through their presence.

In short, the incarnational model of youth ministry attempts evangelism by osmosis. This is destined to fail unless you redefine what it means to succeed in evangelism (alas, a task that has been done very frequently lately). Darren's model, which we're about to see, is just another explosion of the incarnational model of youth ministry and a wondering of how it can be repaired.

So this is what he has to say:

And my wondering continues towards my theology of Youth Ministry, and my understanding of a truly incarnational model, one that takes seriously the ministry that Jesus lived out and demonstrated.

The incarnational model that we're being sold in missional circles is one that says something like "find a group of people that you have a heart for, and become a part of that community, entering into it, living within it, being someone who moves intentionally into it so as to bring them to Christ".

And the issue I have with the model is that intention, that there's still a reason for the ministry, behind the relationship and many still try to figure out their success and failure against that reason or purpose, (has teh community become more inviting, have they become christian, have they asked me about God, have they become less at risk?).

And a paragraph later:

You see, as far as my reading of the scripture goes is that God just wanted to be with us so much that he put flesh on and joined our lives. There wasn't really a reason to the incarnation, no ulterior motive except for the beauty and the needing of that relationship. God loved, God came.

As I've already mentioned and as Darren pre-empts in the next paragraph, the conservative evangelicals (or even the not-so conservative evangelicals) reading this are going to say "uh, I think you've forgotten Salvation there". And they'd be right. God loved, God came, God died, God saved. Yes God loves us so much that He wants to be in relationship with us, after all, look at the Garden of Eden pre-fall. There is God walking with Adam. But when Christ comes down He doesn't just come to hang out with people, He comes to save them so that they can be with Him in heaven. They will be His people and He will be their God. I don't want to labour this point, because in a sense, if you disagree on it, there is only so far any communication about how we do ministry can go, but this is the quote Jesus opens his ministry with in Luke's Gospel.

"The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,
because he has anointed me
to proclaim good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives
and recovering of sight to the blind,
to set at liberty those who are oppressed,
to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor."

Luke 4:18-19

Jesus has intentionality, He comes to proclaim good news, to recover sight, to set at liberty those who are oppressed. He has a mission. He comes to save. And I don't want to practice a ministry model where I undermine that God needed to die for me and I don't follow in His example.

¹ You know, High School Chick Flick in which Freddie Prinze Jr. decides to try and woo Rachael Leigh Cook to win a bet, and then he falls in love with her and they live happily after some bumpy paths ever after? No?

² Like an Ewok but less marketable. Also rubbish at killing Stormtroopers.

³ I'd like to think I've matured enough that if I wrote this today I'd remove the cheap stab at Pentecostalism, not least because I'm a firm believer that revivals happen. But the point that sometimes we excuse the lack of results as "sowing the seeds" for later, and that that excuse is just that, still stands.

Does Satan Exist?

In line with the position of the Bible, the official position of this website is 'yes', but if you want to follow the argument here are some Americans (including Driscoll) debating it.

Job: Executive Team Leader - Centre for Youth Ministry

Probably the most influential job in the field of Christian youth worker training has just been created. Even if this is nothing you can do, if you've got a passion or just the faintest interest in Christian youth work this is something to be praying about. Here is their blurb:

The Centre for Youth Ministry (CYM) is a successful organisation which exists to create and provide innovative education and professional training and academic research in Christian Youth Work.

After significant structural and organisational review, we are looking to appoint an Executive Team Leader to take CYM to the next stage of its development. This dynamic and inspirational person will develop CYM strategically, leading a team including regional centre directors, oversee the central functions and take CYM into a new season of opportunity.

The successful candidate will have a high level of leadership and management experience, a good understanding of learning and education and an excellent ability to communicate and raise the profile of CYM. You should have an active personal Christian faith with a heart for young people. You should have initiative, experience of issues faced by those in youth ministry and experience in the 'business' side of leading a charity.

Salary in the region of £40,000 a year.

There is a Genuine Occupational Requirement for this post to be filled by a committed Christian. Regulation 7(2) of the Employment Equality (Religion or belief) Regulations 2003 apply.

Please go to http://www.centreforyouthministry.ac.uk/html/job_vacancies.html for further information.

Closing date for applications: 15 May 2009

Facebook Policy

We've got a Facebook policy for at work now, for guidance on hilarious situations such as "a young person just added me" and "I just saw photos of Jimmy downing a crate of Sainsbury's Basics Lager". It's very beta, so while we are running with it, I'm not going to stick it up online just yet. If you wish to see a copy of it though, give us a shout and I'll e-mail it to you with a whole wadge of caveats stuck on the front. Contact at the usual e-mail address or Twitter it up. (Or you could, possibly ironically, contact me via Facebook.)

Manipulation and Youth Ministry

Darren at Digital Orthodoxy has posted a series of posts on manipulation inside of Youth Ministry, the key one being the third post though all are worth a read. I disagree with him on multiple levels though think he's onto something, what exactly that is you'll have to guess for now because I'm half-way through a response and it's just gone midnight. So here's some homework. Read his posts, then come back here in day or two and read my response.

Yet Again More How Many Youth Workers Does It Take To Change A Lightbulb

Q) How many youth leaders does it take to change a lightbulb?
A) Broken? The lightbulb isn't broken. Keep trying it for another four or five years, I'm sure you'll get results

Q) How many youth leaders does it take to change a lightbulb?
A) You know once there was a lightbulb who wasn't a lightbulb, but the lightbulb, but some people thought he was just a lightbulb, but they were wrong. And that lightbulb was Jesus and he wants you all to not start smoking. I mean turn to him in repentance.

Q) How many youth leaders does it take to change a lightbulb?
A) One, but someone else is going to have to mind the office while they run out to the lighting shop down the road, because now the light's gone they've finally got an excuse to buy a new cool lightbulb which'll help make the youth centre that much cooler, and consequentially finally get those young people to turn to Christ.

Q) How many youth leaders does it take to change a lightbulb?
A) One, but it might be sometime before they realise it's broken, because hide and seek in the dark is integral to telling the story of John the Baptist and it's not like they're not turning on the light because they're dragging out the game because they haven't planned the bible study properly.

Q) How many youth leaders does it take to change a lightbulb?
A) Two, one to change the lightbulb and one to hold the pool table they're standing on still.

Q) How many youth leaders does it take to change a lightbulb?
A) Schcuhshbby shbunniesh!

(for the previous entries in bad lightbulb jokes see here)

Protect Your Child The Russian Way

The dangers of the internet, as translated into a Russian TV public-awareness commercial. Video and transcript over at English Russia" (a website I could look at all day).

Acts 29 Church Planting Conference in London

Tim Chester reports on an Acts 29 Church Planting Conference happening in London. Dates are Tuesday 9 - Wednesday 10 June 2009, from 10am - 4pm, at St James Clerkenwell, EC1R 0EA. Tim has the rest of the details, and you can book online here.

(For fact fans, that's the same place I got married in.)

Who Watches

Nate Morgan Locke¹ has an article up on the CE website with some Christian thoughts on Watchmen.

The great thing about Watchmen is that it holds up, as it were, a mirror to human nature and reflects back at the viewer the bleak and depressing reality.

Don't read it if you don't want the ending (or bits of the middle) of the Watchmen spoiled.

¹ Disclosure: Nate just told me to go check this out as he me made coffee.

Hymns Ancient and Modern

As a Reformed Calvinistic Indie-Rock kid who is incredibly stuck up about music, I feel uniquely qualified to comment on the Page CXVI project a group of people who've decided to make good, solid, glorious hymns accessible and modern and for a while release them free on the internet. People seem to be describing it as indie-rock, which is fine, but a bit broad. For reference these things are hitting somewhere between Modest Mouse and Death Cab for Cutie, it's the North West USA indie that didn't embrace grunge. Couple of points:

First of all, it is very well done. As said, I'm a music snob, I like to not like things, yet this is very very good. I've been listening to it all day and am more impressed as it goes on. So much of it could be absolutely awful, as so much of Christian music re-hashing old songs is. But they seem to have understood that these songs are good because their depth of theology should move people to tears and so that's what the songs try to do. And they're good.

Second of all, I'm not sure it always works for corporate worship. The problem with having a sing-a-long to popular music is that it's not very sing-a-long-able to. Lots of modern music has made an art out of subsuming the lyrics into the rest of the music, which is often very technical. Singing along to their version of In Christ Alone is nigh on impossible and other ones often don't fair better. This isn't a criticism of the music, it's just a point, the further you go towards an ease of singing the plainer you make the vocal part which often destroys the fun of the song. But that's also a strength of this music, you can't sing along at church, but it means you will sing along on your iPod. And the words will sink into your heart and stay there and that's a good thing. Better than having "You can't mistake my biology (the way that we talk, the way that we walk)" in your head all day. Not that that has happened to me.

So, if you're thinking "oh more worship music" then you're wrong. If you're thinking "I'd like some more good Christian music to listen to on my iPod every now and again" then you're in luck.

Also, ten points for impossibly obscure The Magicians Nephew reference in the band title (though, I can't for a minute imagine that any editions used Roman Numerals, or that anyone would get it without it being subtly pointed out on the website).

IPhone

So, I've just picked up an iPhone, the previous phone having been dramatically taken out by a rogue charger. It's as good and as frustrating as everyone makes out. Here's how I've used it for Christian gospel ministry so far:

• have written some prayer points on the notes app.
• have checked champions league scores when out for pizza with young people.
• uh...

So, not revolutionary, but still. It is shiny.

How To Drive A Minibus Legally

This came up in a meeting a few weeks ago, and so I thought I'd write it up to clarify it. Here's how you can drive a minibus in the UK legally. This is a slightly more human version of the Department for Transport's Guidelines On Incidental Driving Of Minibuses (pdf). This is not legal advice, so if any of this is something you have to deal with read the legal documents yourself and contact the DVLA and your insurance company if you're still in doubt.

A minibus is defined as a vehicle between 10 and 17 seats (including the driver) and under 3.5 tonnes unladen (or 4.25 tonnes if you've got disability access features installed like a lift). This is the only type of vehicle we're dealing with in this article. If it's bigger than that then it's a bus, and you'll need a full D licence (which requires an extensive test) to drive it. If it's smaller than that it's a car. You should learn to drive one of those before you drive a minibus.

There are three ways you can drive a minibus:

If you hold a full D or D1 licence (which can only be achieved if you've actually taken a test to gain the D or D1 licence) you can drive anyone in a minibus for any purpose you want and you and the company or charity you work for can receive payment for it.

If you passed your regular car practical driving test before 1 January 1997 then your have a D1 (101) licence. The 101 means not for hire or reward. This means you can do everything a D1 licence holder does, but you CANNOT charge anyone for using this service. So you can't ask young people to pay £5 for fuel costs for the trip, or pay extra for what they pay for youth club. This means that you need to make it clear that any money you receive when taking young people on a trip or picking them up is for the activity not for the use of the minibus. So, if your club charges £1 entrance fee to everyone and you pick up some young people in the minibus and they have to pay £1 like everyone else, that's fine, but if they have to pay £2, or £1 before they get in the bus, you're probably in the wrong. Also residential fees should be clear that you're paying for the residential centre and not for the transport.

If you passed your regular car practical driving test on or after 1 January 1997 then you don't have any sort of D1 licence. However, you can still drive a minibus under certain conditions. If it is for non-commercial, social purposes, are over 21, have passed your car test for more than 2 years , and are driving as a volunteer then you can drive a minibus. Exactly as above you CANNOT charge anyone for using this service.

There is a way that you can charge young people for using the minibus under the last two sorts of licences. You can apply for a Minibus and Community Bus Permit (a section 19 permit) which entitles you to make a charge for the young people. You've got to be an organisation involved with education, religion, social welfare, recreation or other activities of benefit to the community to get this, but if you work for a youth club, that's probably not too hard to prove. I've got no idea how you get one of these licences. Ring up the DVLA and find out (0870 240 0009).

Remember, regardless of how you get to drive a minibus it has to have at most 17 seats including the driver and weight under 3.5 tonnes! If it's over either of those things you've got to find yourself a full D Licence (or just hire a coach).

Grey areas:

These are areas where it seems that law is not quite clear or there seem to be loopholes. Ultimately this'll only come up if you get in an accident and the police or an insurance company try to establish whether or not you're actually insured. It's one of those things that unless it's gone to court before, no-one will be that clear on what happens. Ring up your insurance company and the DVLA if there are any doubts and check.

A paid worker without a D1 licence (of any type) drives a minibus "on their free time". If you're driving a minibus and stating that you're doing this outside of your regular working hours and going unpaid for it, then it seems like that is legitimate but I'm not sure how that'll hold up in court. If you're going to do this then you should formally let your boss or management committee know this in paper, so that it's abundantly clear that this is in your free time and ring up your insurance company to check you're covered first. Even then, it might not hold up in court if you are in an accident.

I've got no idea how this applies to government services. This law seems to exist for the charity sector, not for the government sector.

Come See the Tabernacle

For one day only, the actual genuine¹ Israelite Tabernacle will be erected in the sports hall of the All Souls Clubhouse, London. Come and be taken for a tour around a working², half size replica of the Tabernacle by a real priest of the people of God (who knows personally the great High Priest). TOUCH the ARK OF THE COVENANT (without dying)! SEE into the HOLY of HOLYS (without getting smote)! FIND OUT what on earth a BRONZE LAVER is³.

All this and more (Lampstands! Ephods! Gallons of Blood!), from 18:00 - 21:00 at 141 Cleveland Street, London (but use the side entrance by the pub).

Seriously, it'll be awesome. If you're on facebook you might be able to see this event link. Contact me for more details.

¹ A lie.

² Also a lie.

³ Actually I can't remember if this one got worked out, something about Jesus though.

How To Recruit and Employ a Youth Worker

London Diocese are running a training even called "How To Recruit and Employ a Youth Worker". I'm assuming that doesn't need much more explanation, but if it does the blurb is below.

More and more churches are seeking to employ youth workers to oversee and develop their youth work and ministry. Some churches use the more traditional model of employing a full-time worker, some join forces with other churches and employ a youth worker across a cluster, whilst others have a smaller budget and choose to employ a part-time worker or sessional staff to lead their activities. Whatever model you opt for, if you've not done it before, recruiting and employing a youth worker can seem like a huge task.

This new training course we have developed will take you through the whole process, from working out what it is you want and drafting a job description through to planning an induction programme for your new youth worker. You will also receive a copy of 'Leaps and Bounds' - our new youth work toolkit which contains all the recruitment forms you will need.

It is aimed at clergy, PCC members and other church staff who are considering employing a youth worker or are just beginning the process.

Date: Wednesday 8th April 2009
Times: 10.00am - 3pm. A light lunch will be provided.
Venue: London Diocesan House (Room A), 36 Causton Street, London, SW1P 4AU.
Transport: Nearest tube station is Pimlico on the Victoria line.
Cost: £20 per person (payment required prior to event)
Trainer: Kate from the Youth Development Project of the Diocese of London

Return the booking form to the address on it to book (which apparently is essential).

First Aid Training For Knife and Gun Wounds

It's worrying, that sometimes, this is what our young people need. Some Ghanian nurses in Merseyside have set-up "a charity teaching young people how to deal with gun and knife wounds".

As Someone Younger

Just picked up my old NIV pocket bible that I had when I was in school as I'm preaching on Friday night and can't do it from the ESV that I now carry around. Turned in it for the first time in years to (spoiler alert!) 1 Peter 3:8-22 which is the passage I'm preaching on, specifically verse 15 which starts "But in your hearts set apart Christ as Lord." There is a little star next to it that I've written in, with a related footnote at the bottom that reads "most important thing". The last question I wrote down as I prepared the talk was "is that passage really the summary of the key point in all of 1 Peter"? It turns out that my 17 year old self is, in the important respects, as capable to handle the Bible as I am now.

Defending Youth Work

Not sure who these people are (or where they're from, or what they did) but the document linked to is worth a read. It's called Defending Youth Work and is a fairly decent introduction to where the whole secular youth work identity crisis stems from.

Thirty years ago Youth Work aspired to a special relationship with young people. It wanted to meet young women and men on their terms. It claimed to be 'on their side'. Three decades later Youth Work is close to abandoning this distinctive commitment. Today it accepts the State's terms. It sides with the State's agenda. Perhaps we exaggerate, but a profound change has taken place.

If you can't be bothered downloading the Word document, I've saved it as a pdf file here.

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