Youth

The youth work is run together as a partnership across the parish, overseen by a Youth Missioner and Enabler (YME). The vision for the youth work is:

Reaching Wider – We aim to connect with young people regardless of their faith through developing relationships with local schools and developing youth activities in the area. We aim to share the gospel through words and activities where appropriate in an age and culturally appropriate manner, and also through our actions.

Reaching Deeper – We aim to encourage young people to learn more about and connect with God as individuals through prayer, reading the Bible and worship in general. We also aim for them to do this individually and with support from others, which could involve showing the young people different ways to do this to help find the ways that work for individual young people to connect with God and by creating an appropriate environment.

Rooted in Prayer – We aim to encourage the young people and volunteers to develop their prayer lives as individuals and as a team of volunteers. This includes praying with and for young people, the volunteer team and the wider community. We aim for this to happen in the form of monthly youth team prayer meetings, before, during and after sessions and with individuals where appropriate.

Although currently most of the youth activities is currently at St Philip’s, here at St Joe’s we make every effort to support our young people where possible and appropriate.

Meet our Youth Team

This is Joel, our Youth Missioner and Enabler. Joel oversees the youth activities across the parish.

If you have any questions about any of the activities or ways that we can support any individual young people you can contact him at: joel.yoco@pennfieldsparish.co.uk. More information on the activities run across the parish can be found at www.saintphilips.co.uk/youth.

Where are these groups?

YME Update – October 2021

The first month into the new academic year has had its ups and downs. Thankfully they have mostly been ups, with work slowly progressing on the downs.

In church activities have restarted, with Path looking at the fruit of the Spirit this term and Rooted looking at some of the Psalms and how the psalmists react in different situations towards God and others this half term. The Young Women’s Ministry also continues, looking at various themes and characters in the Bible. This month has also seen the start of the challenge given to all the young people to serve the church once a month in ways that they feel they can, for those that weren’t already. For Path, the first Sunday of the month will give them the opportunity to do this during the church service, with many things for them to help with. The aim of this is for them to encourage them to learn how to serve, how it fits with being a Christian and as part of the church. This should progress as time goes on. We also went to Laser Quest, with 19 young people in attendance, some of which we saw some young people we hadn’t seen since before lockdown but most of which had connected in one of the groups at some point.

The Bridge Community events have also got underway, albeit slowly. This was always the expectation and the hope is that the attendance continues to grow over the next few months. The main way is to connect with young people in the schools however this is yet to happen due to the slow nature of schools responding. The hope is that this can be sorted by half term. This is not the only way I can connect with young people, with thoughts of other ways currently under consideration but another way of connecting with young people is using connections that you may have. Although advertised as community activities, they are open to church young people should they want to go/be able to go. Knowing what young people are like, they are more likely to attend things if their friends are going, although this is with the understanding that they aren’t able to go to everything.

As a Youth Ministry, we have a total of 17 volunteers across all the activities, which enable the groups to run, although a couple more will be needed as and when the Bridge Community activities grow in numbers. Thank you to those who have offered their time to support the young people.

Prayer Pointers

Bridge Community activities
Responses from schools
Other ways to connect with all young people

St Joseph's Church

Coalway Road
Merry Hill
Wolverhampton
WV3 7NP

St Philip's Church

Church Road

Wolverhampton

WV3 7EN