Youth ministry in the time of Covid

Youth ministry at St Denys Church Lisvane thrived during the pandemic. Here Ali Jensen, youth worker at St Denys, shares ideas for growing your youth ministry online and tells us why creating a sense of community is important.

Let it never be said that a challenge can’t be taken on in unprecedented circumstances and ‘not’ be achieved. In and with God, all things truly ‘are’ possible. This is indeed what happened when I was employed as a children’s and youth worker at the start of a national pandemic.

As all existing church groups moved to Zoom, we needed to consider how we might provide belonging, fun, and spiritual investment for the children and young people in our church family and community.

During the pandemic we started three new children’s groups. We set up a youth group for teenagers, introduced children’s talks as part of Sunday provision and children’s worksheets for Sundays when we were on Zoom. We also continued with our ongoing younger youth provision and mentoring programme.

How we might provide belonging, fun, and spiritual investment for the children and young people

Activities on Zoom need to be fast paced, creative and supportive of all learning styles. This was the only way we could ensure we kept attention and attendance. At the start of each term we delivered bags of goodies to each child, and the contents were used each week for our Zoom events. We even staged a virtual Zoom sleepover!

Creating a sense of community was important to us. This became even more important as lockdown continued. So we set up Whatsapp groups for young people and for parents, sent birthday birthday cards and delivered prizes. There was constant communication, care and plenty fun. The pandemic really has challenged us to think outside of the box.

As soon as restrictions eased we began outside challenges in the rain and mud.

We celebrated Christingle by staging a community treasure hunt.

Clues led families to find boxes which contained part of the Christingle.

The last box contained a QR code that opened a video showing children how to make their Christingle, and what each element symbolised.

During Holy Week we distributed Easter boxes. In the five days leading up to Easter, a different item was to be made with the contents of the box, resulting in an Easter display, all instructions for the making provided on short videos sent to family phones.

Along with the Easter story. Easter saw the youth paint pebbles and hide them around the community. Once you found the hidden pebbles, we asked people to take photos and show it to us on the vicarage driveway . We would swap a pebble photo for a chocolate egg. Families were lining the street (at a safe distance) to collect a chocolate egg. We gave away over 100 Easter Eggs.

A game of graveyard sardines was lots of fun!

We even staged a Light Party (an alternative to Halloween in collaboration with another church on Facebook, dropping off glow sticks and other goodies on the children's doorsteps.

With around 30 young people in our youth groups, maintaining social distancing was a challenge. However, we simply made the rules part of our ‘fun’ – hand sanitising after each round of a game, for example. We held many events outside, including Domino’s pizza around a fire pit. And a game of graveyard sardines was lots of fun!

As soon as we could we organised beach events, trips to climbing centres and even staged murder mystery parties with a medieval theme for Christmas.

Fundamental to our youth work is mentoring. We value our one to one time with young people - talking, sharing life and studying the Bible. These sessions happened on on Zoom and then on walks in public spaces. As we emerge from the pandemic we're looking forward to being back in the coffee shop again.

Children’s and youth ministry is all about loving Jesus first and then truly loving and caring for all the children and young people God chooses to send into your care. This will be what motivates you to go the extra mile to build community with them so they always feel they belong. Alongside all this activity, we devised children protection agendas to safeguard all our work and revised consent forms to include things such as Zoom and WhatsApp.

Youth ministry is all about loving Jesus and caring for young people.

If I was to offer any advice on how to grow your children’s and youth work, it would simply be focus on love. Jesus is love. Jesus showed us how to love. That is our inspiration, to truly love every child and young person that walks through our doors with the love of Christ.