There was no doubting Dr. Bex Lewis’s enthusiasm for all things digital.  She is not only an expert on the web and social media, she is a dedicated user!

The CGMC Spring Conference this year had chosen to focus on how technology is impacting our ministry with children and families and, to borrow the subtitle from Dr. Lewis’s recent book on this for parents, on how we can ‘enjoy the best and avoid the worst’ of all that is available at the press of a button on the keyboard or the slide of a finger on a screen. This is the digital age within which our children are growing up; and they are natives in this world while many of us who have responsibility to train, lead and inspire those who work among these children are merely digital visitors.  There was a lot to unpack and discuss over our 24 hours together.

Dr. Lewis began by introducing us to some of the facts and figures about social media and its use – although these are already out of date as they were being given!  All this raised many interesting issues for our work.  The afternoon presentation was a free-flowing conversation between our guest speaker and us as a group as each new slide prompted thoughts, reactions and more questions.  Like browsing the web itself, we soon found ourselves following trails far from the path we started on and stumbling across new challenges and possibilities as our Internet search led us from one reflection to the next!  Today’s social media revolution is the new reality for this generation and just as for the missionaries of old who were eager to share the gospel, we too need to get to know this new culture if we are to engage with it and find ways both to receive and share God’s love appropriately among those we work with.

This is a generation that even before birth already has a digital shadow; a generation that is using fewer and fewer words but communicating more and more; a generation that has already abandoned texting and is using other platforms to create communities; a generation for whom images and messages are important in the moment but then instantly lost; but it is also a generation, as Dr. Lewis observed, that in many respects is not as media-savvy about the commercial dangers of the web as we might have imagined.

All of us need help to be more confident about how and why we use the web and how we manage for example ‘the long arm of Google’ and don’t just look at what the advertisers want us to see.  Because something is free doesn’t always mean it is helpful and we need to be alert as to who and what is driving our interest in what is out there online.  However Dr. Lewis didn’t want us as Christians to retreat from this world but to be ‘present’ in a whole-life way, not segregating our digital and spiritual lives.  The Internet offers so many new and positive ways to engage with a wide audience and share our faith story.  She cited for example the website ‘sayinggoodbye.com’ as a recent example of one set up by Christians for those whose babies had died, offering them a safe space to grief and find support.

Many of us in CGMC face very practical questions around the use of social media in our ministry.  Should we for example insist that phones be turned off or do we encourage tweeting etc. when we work with children and young people?  Much is made of this generation’s ability to multi-task although as Dr Lewis commented, there are two ways in which this can happen: one which adds to the conversation and one which distracts.  It seems it’s not always easy to spot the difference.

Another dimension to this whole debate is the way in which this web revolution is redefining what we mean by a ‘friend’ or a ‘neighbour’.  Both of these are precious words within our faith tradition but now might well mean someone far away whom we have never met face to face but with whom we share something in common; and in some cases these may one day even become ‘face-to-face friends’.  Throughout history every new technology has generated a moral panic of some sort about its negative potential and even corrupting influence, but we should beware joining in with this popular outbreak of paranoia; far better that we model best practice in the use of the web as a tool for good and help others to hear the voices of common sense that will encourage them to find their own way through the sound and fury of some of the current safeguarding debates.  It is important to remind ourselves that it is human beings at the end of the fingers that are using these new tools and that the same rules of how we should respect and care for each other apply whether it is face to face or tweet to tweet.  We are in control of what we share and we want to see and although of course there is ‘bad stuff’ out there as in all walks of life, there are in fact more safeguards around the web than is ever possible within the routines of our everyday lives.  There may be new risks but there are also new ways to manage and think about these risks.

Technology makes many things possible but not necessarily inevitable.  We do not have to be, as Dr. Lewis reminded us, victims of some sort of technological determinism.  In fact social media and the web have opened up all sorts of important debates for us as Christians about the nature of church and the way to make contact with communities for whom church attendance for all sorts of reasons is either difficult, unattractive or impossible.  At the heart of our faith the incarnation teaches us both that God understands what it means to be human but also that as Jesus God can show us how to be the best humans we can be, both person to person in the flesh and face to screen online.

This first session raised lots of interesting lines of thought which we continued to explore and develop in one to one conversations and the next morning.  The world of social media has added many positive dimensions to our ministries, helping children to connect to a wider world, giving them a voice, enabling them to explore more creative responses in learning, and even, as one member pointed out, reducing vandalism on our buses because the children now have something else to do on the journey home!  As a church we must not be scared of what is new but help each other to use it well and not let it use us.  There are of course some worrying issues, for example, the digital divide between the developed and developing world and the part this has to play in the growing global tensions between the rich and the poor; the way it may be re-wiring brain patterns for very young children who are engaging with this digital world too quickly and too soon; the way it may well be affecting our understanding of friendships in depth; and perhaps even in the area of possible web addiction by some.  All this is part of the fascinating debate that could have continued.  We are all caught up in the new digital age in some way or another but seeing it as part of a new and exciting tool box of learning is perhaps the healthiest and most positive way forward.

On the second morning we took our theme further by sharing with each other the range of digital communications that we received within our ministries, with the challenge as to how we might practically filter these more effectively both for ourselves and for those we serve.  We need to help others distinguish between what is worth reading and what is not.  We also reflected that we need to be selective in our sharing of resources according to the different audiences with whom we are communicating and as ‘guardians’ be careful about what we recommend.  There is also an issue about keeping a wise balance between our personal and our professional roles in this context. Finally, Mary then helped us compile a list of recommended websites – which she deftly called up on the web even as we spoke! – and she will send this list around the group following the conference.

Children and young people, we all acknowledged, will always be somewhat ahead of us in this digital world, but in fact, young people needing and finding somewhere as their own personal ‘secret’ space is nothing new and indeed is healthy for each generation.  Our job is to be responsible listeners and at least be aware of what is out there so we can be informed leaders who can be trusted and who set a good example of web use.  We are all ‘Bringing up children in a digital age’ as Dr. Lewis’s book is entitled, and in this respect, whether we are online addicts or not, we all need to help each other live with this new world of social media responsibly.  To this end we plan to post follow-up material from this conference to keep people informed.  Our website and Facebook page   https://www.facebook.com/pages/CGMC/118971141446882  are the places to go to find information about what we discussed and in particularly the decisions taken at our Business Meeting, which includes information about our exciting partnership with the Methodist Church and the Family Ministry research.  We even talked about having a CGMC Pinterest board.  When it’s up and running, we’ll give you a tweet! 

Our thanks go to Mary and Gail who helped arrange this stimulating conference. Who will ever forget our creative ‘Bible verses of promise out of a cereal packet’ devotion on the second morning?!  Cheerio!

In recent years the word ‘family’ has hit our UK headlines for good and for bad. We hear from those who lament the loss of ‘traditional family values’ and complain of ‘family breakdown’. We are all too familiar with terms such as ‘fatherless families’, ‘one-parent families’ and ‘blended families’. And to this we could add many more, such as ‘displaced families’, ‘dispersed families’, ‘abusive families’ and ‘networked families’; and all this is alongside what now seems the rather old-fashioned term, namely ‘the nuclear family’. At the same time as all this, organisations and voluntary groups, including the church, are aspiring to be ‘family friendly’, have a ‘family ethos’ and want to nurture ‘family well-being’. It’s clear that family matters; but it’s also obvious that defining family isn’t that easy.

The Christian Church is caught in this same culture of uncertainty. There is the constant rebranding of the ‘family service’; its own mixed understanding of the church as ‘the family of God’; and increasingly, we come across the re-naming of its traditional children’s work as ‘children and family ministry’. What is going on? What is ‘family’ in our western, industrialised 21st century world? What, if anything, is a theology of the nature of family? What does Christian tradition say about family? And what guidance does the Bible have to offer that might inform some of these questions?

Alongside all this, family matters are of current and on-going interest to both secular and faith-based research and the general public conversation; but how do families still matter? And more especially, how do they matter to the church and why? And how does all this relate to our traditional endeavour as Christian communities to nurture children for a life of faith? Should traditional children’s workers now have nurturing parents as part of their remit? And if they are to, how are they equipped for this task?

All these questions and many more lay behind our November 2013 CGMC conference, with its catch-all title of ‘Children and Family Ministry – where are we now?’ The first day of our conference at the International Mission Centre of the Baptist Church, in Selly Oak south of Birmingham, was open to day visitors and there were in total over 40 of us who gathered to explore this topical theme. This wider audience opened up a great variety of perspectives and a refreshing breadth of contribution, as well as allowing CGMC members to make new friends, renew old acquaintances and to share its actions and concerns with a wider audience.

Family is clearly a big word; and indeed it always used to be. Even the briefest glance at the Old Testament for example reveals that family includes a very wide network of immediate as well as more distant relatives. And even amongst immediate family, relationships could be complex – just pause to reflect on how each of the brothers is related to the others within Jacob’s blended family! Biblical families – and indeed many families in the developing world today – are not just a gathering of those connected by DNA but also by bonds of friendship, financial dependence, mutual concerns over territory as well as a shared faith. It’s only in more recent history that we have tended to limit ‘family’ in the west to two parents and their biological children, living in what we have called the ‘family home’. But in the 21st century things are very different and families now come in all shapes and sizes, drawn together by loyalties and commitments that don’t necessarily depend on promises made in public at a civil or religious ceremony.

The creation mandate to the man and the woman to become one and to have children is a biological one; however it is clear from the rest of the Old Testament that the mandate to nurture those children and help them grow into a life of faith is not the responsibility of the parents alone. It was a task for the whole community to raise a child and help her or him to flourish as a human being – to become all that she or he is meant to be. Exactly how this community of faith operates in our western world is hard to say and whether the family of the church can take on this role is debateable. Should its energies go into being this wider family for the children in its midst, or is its role to help the individual families within its membership – however those families are constituted – to do that job in the home? How does faith in the inter-generational village of the church relate to faith in homes? For many children’s workers this is a whole new dimension to their original job description and a challenge to a ministry, which up to now has tended to deal with the generations in age- related silos. Church ministry has been shaped by an age-related educational model and consequently this has meant that insights about human spirituality, that have come particularly from those with a specialism in children’s ministry, have been too easily overlooked and side-lined by the rest of the church.

So our CGMC investigation into family ministry was both important and timely; a moment to rethink how we bring children and adult ministry into a more holistic togetherness as a ministry to people – people of all ages – and thus focus on what it means for all God’s children, young and old, to come to fullness of life.

The conference opened with a reflection on the sort of families that we come across in the New Testament and in particular the family experiences of Jesus himself. His own family was by no means typical and in his life he found safety and nourishment from being with all sorts of ‘family’ groups, both with and without children present. Perhaps his most telling statement was that his true brothers and sisters were those who chose to obey God.

And then to stimulate our thoughts, we watched a 10 minute video presentation that drew together a series of short interviews with a range of those involved with children’s and family ministry around the UK. There were also responses from parents and carers; from workers, students and experts, who reflected on where they experienced God, what church meant for them, how their roles have changed, and how they saw children and family ministry in five years time. This led to discussion groups focusing on a range of key questions:

• In your contexts how do we equip volunteers and paid workers to enable children and families to meet with God and grow in faith?
• What does church in a national context and local context need to do to gain a clearer understanding of the needs of families?
• Where do we enable the voice of children and their families to impact and influence what we provide nationally and locally?
• In the context of your setting, what does holistic support around children look like?
• In the context of your own setting, what do we need to do or change to meet theneeds of families in the 21st century?
• How can churches nationally and locally have a better dialogue with families?
• And what are the gaps in training and provision of resource material?

A range of responses to these questions was captured on flipcharts as they were passed from group to group and a list of what was written will be published on the CGMC website. The overall effect of the questions however was to throw lots of thoughts up into the air and to get people thinking about the issues in the widest possible sense.

We then heard from four invited speakers who each presented a 10 minute perspective on children and family today.

1. Nigel Varndell of the Children’s Society kicked off with statistics and observations on the way in which issues of poverty, relationships and autonomy come to bear on children and families. Sadly it seems inevitable that the 27% of UK children who are living in poverty in 2013 will sharply increase by 2020 and yet these children don’t often realise they are in poverty as their parents and carers do a good job of covering up, to avoid worry and stigma. In any family it is the quality of relationships that matters, yet research has shown that the happiness of children declines as they grow older, particularly among girls, while at the same time it is clear from the research that all children look for boundaries to feel secure. Nigel left us with three stark but important questions:

• How can the Church be good news to the children and families facing issues of poverty in 21st Century UK?
• What is the quality of the relationships that church congregations are making with families in their community?
• How are churches allowing children to have a say in the running of a church community?

2. Val Mylechreest, Families Officer for the Salvation Army, then took us on the next stage, presenting some of the stories of what these statistics look like in practice within the work of the Salvation Army. It is becoming difficult for many families to provide the basics anymore and the long summer holidays in particular can provide real challenges to family survival. In many ways these issues today are not dissimilar from when William Booth first started his work and wrote about the situation ‘in darkest England’ over 100 years ago; then, like today, eating or heating was the stark choice for many. This leads of course to an increase in stress and brokenness within families, with parents supporting multiple children and a generation of single parents relying on school meals. A number of Salvation Army Corps have experience of working with single teenage parents and providing much needed social support alongside the sharing of faith.

3. Mary Hawes, the Church of England Youth and Children’s Advisor, took us on an imaginary flight through 10 years of Children’s Ministry, mapping some of the trends and key thinking that have emerged during this time. Although there are some signs of new interest in trying to be church for the family in its various shapes and sizes, and also a growing concern for faith in homes, it seems that much that has been learned has yet to filter down and influence best practice in most of our churches.

4. Gail Adcock, who is heading up a families research project for the Methodist Church in co-operation with CGMC, shared some of her initial insights and findings from talking with children’s and family workers across the country. The aim is to gather an overview of what family ministry looks like today, to identify key trends and to explore the ways the church can best support what is going on. It is a big study and there is a huge diversity in what she has observed already. However what is being done is often very short-term, when long-term relationships are really needed. A more holistic approach is called for and a more joined-up approach from churches.

Once again the insights and information from these speakers opened up a number of avenues for conversation as conference delegates split into groups to identify key questions they would like to ask of a selected panel after lunch. This panel was made up of six of the delegates who represented a range of denominations and Christian experience of working with children and families. The following key questions were addressed:

• What is the nature of a church? Is it like a football team or a brass band?!
• What are the barriers people meet with when they consider multi-generational church?
• Can the church be more prophetic rather just reacting to trends within society?
• How can we get children’s and family ministry higher up on the agenda of churches?

The panel’s varied and insightful answers were captured on video and CGMC plans to make this available on its website, so that others can use this to stimulate further discussion in members’ constituencies. Some important practical and theological questions emerged, namely:

• Where does authority lie within the inter-relationships of adults and children in a church community and how do we facilitate a shared ownership of the issues that face everyone? It was suggested that if we look at the budget allocation of most churches, this tends to reveal its understanding of itself as church.
• The model for diversity within the Christian community, and its complexity, finds its roots within the Trinity. Within this understanding of the inclusive and diverse nature of God, we find our model for a church that must surely embrace all.
• The term all-age is often unhelpful in our discussions and even the word ‘multi- generational’ tends to focus on the people involved in an age related way. Within the community of the church we should be modelling a variety that welcomes and values different styles and stages of faith whatever the age of those involved. Creating space for all to belong must be a priority.
• Speakers drew our attention to the danger of churches being seduced by the current climate of consumerism and thus becoming product-orientated. Churches should also be advocating the importance of silence and modelling new ways of being together that are not measured by the market, particularly at a time when the welfare state is becoming the market state. Churches need to be thinking how and where they need to challenge the state because it is failing and where it can do it better and set an example.
• Our Christian understanding of the nature of personhood is also vital in all these discussions. We need to refuse to be defined by what we own or by what we do or how busy we are. Our identity cannot be bought. The Christian understanding of identity lies in the quality of our relationship with God and with our neighbours.
• Although the model of church as a brass band or football team opened up all sorts of interesting conversations, some of the panel preferred to return to the Biblical model of the church as body, with its gifts and strengths and interdependence. We should not talk about groups of people in silos but individuals, who in their own right are part of a church community that appreciates difference and knows how to say sorry.
• There was general agreement among the panel that we need to celebrate what God is doing wherever the church is working successfully as a family and with families. We cannot engineer instant solutions but need to give processes space to work themselves out in God’s time.

After a full day, we were able to relax as ‘the CGMC family’ both with some space before and after our evening meal as well as coming together for a light-hearted presentation from Colin Pitt, who works for the Education Department of Cadbury World. This family business was begun with Christian values which have strongly influenced its care for its workers. Colin shared some amusing anecdotes and insights from the Cadbury history and we rounded off the evening with chocolate among other things!

On the second day of the conference CGMC members had time to reflect on what had happened on Thursday – the process and how it could be improved, and also where do we take things from here. The day had certainly been busy with discussion and information and clearly more reflection would be needed. It was suggested that perhaps a more intentional sharing of good family ministry practice could have been facilitated and also that the panel had been more of one voice than had been anticipated. Delegates looked forward to re- visiting some of the key questions which will be available on the CGMC website and to taking them back to be discussed within their various networks and organisations. Although no clear threads may have emerged, opening up this topic with such a wide and experienced audience had been welcomed and it was suggested that the planning group meet once again to explore how the discussions from the day could be made available as a toolkit for use by churches as well as church leaders.

Following the CGMC Business meeting, which looked particularly at future conferences, we finished our time together with some practical suggestions as to how CGMC might work more collaboratively and also be more effective in its role as a network and a voice of advocacy on behalf of children in the UK.

It was clear from the 24 hours that family matters are important but at the same time difficult to define both for society and the church. Exactly how family should matter to the church is something that is far from clear but as we approach the International Year of the Family in 2014, CGMC hopes that the discussions and unresolved issues from this conference may have begun to open a door to a wider and continuing debate that the church and its ministers needs to have with itself in relation to those with whom it works. Too often local churches are still thinking in stereotypes and want to put people into silos and thus deal with them separately rather than understanding how they might be part of a whole. It is hoped that some of the questions from this conference will facilitate further discussion about this and be part of ongoing re-evaluation of what it means to work with children, who are in turn also part of complex family networks that should make up a church congregation that believes families matter.

In the lifetimes of most of us in CGMC, understandings of how and when children begin their own journey of faith have changed; and of course, not surprisingly, this is reflected in how the church as a whole has wrestled with what it means ‘to be converted’ and consequently how it also understands mission and outreach. Is it a crisis or a process? Is it nurture into faith or a definite moment of public commitment with a decision to believe? Is it an individual act or a community experience? Is it a once for all happening or a daily discipleship of following ‘the Way’? Or indeed should we even be talking about evangelism at all when it comes to children? The ‘empty vessel’ verses ‘flame to be fanned’ understanding of children’s spirituality surely has insights that question the view that children need to be specifically ‘evangelised’. So, it was with this whole debate that the CGMC Spring conference at Sheldon House in Devon attempted to engage, against the backdrop of these many different understandings and experiences of this whole topic.

Our three days in beautiful surroundings and in one of the most peaceful and comfortable venues we have enjoyed over the years, were all spent on site and divided between sessions that opened up the theme, the sharing of local stories and an attempt to explore the key questions together and work through what we should be saying about all this to those we work with in our denominational and organisational networks, as well as to the church generally in the UK and Ireland. We were not at all surprised to find that we struggled to come to any neat and unambiguous conclusions!

Nick Harding – the children’s work adviser for Nottingham and Southwell diocese – opened up the debate wondering out loud whether, with the loss of confidence that there is around the word evangelism, particularly when applied to children, we may not perhaps have lost our way about at least one important aspect of our ministry. With the statistics pointing to the fact that least 90% of children have little or no knowledge of the Christian faith, surely this was a challenge to present the faith to them more intentionally with an accompanying invitation to believe rather just hoping that somehow our relationship-building ministries of outreach would somehow lead them one day into naming what they already know or perhaps into asking questions to which we might offer some possible answers. Nick’s observation was that there have been hardly any new books written on this whole subject in recent years; in fact it seems a topic to be avoided if at all possible and maybe this is because we have all been rather cowed by accusations of indoctrination and manipulation. When we explored our own experiences as a group, in a ‘conversion line exercise’, it was interesting to see the range of ways in which we each talked about how faith had begun for us and whether we had been ‘evangelised’ into faith or not. And of course this exercise also reminded us that our own personal journeys into faith are hugely influential in shaping our own attitudes and practices when it comes to what we think about evangelism with children.

We can all recognise that there are definitely forms of evangelism with children that are not only unhelpful but very unhealthy; however, does that mean that we should give up on this idea completely? Nick left us with lots of questions, including:

• Are we in danger of being so open-ended as never really to bring children to a point of challenge about anything?
• What, after all, was the message of the gospel?
• Have we created an unhelpful confusion about children both being very spiritual butalso not yet Christian?
• Have we relied too heavily on faith development theories?
• And what ultimately do we understand by the ‘believing’ component of the‘befriending-belonging-believing-behaving’ model of coming to faith?

Following this opening session, Andrea Harrison facilitated further discussion in groups as to what all this meant for our own training and ministries. Our discussions focused around issues such as:

• What is the place of evangelism within the broader spectrum of what is meant by mission?
• How is evangelism understood in the context of what we believe about children’s spirituality?
• Are there helpful guidelines that we can pass on to those we work with?
• What is the relationship between evangelism and discipleship?
• What are helpful models of evangelism in the post-Christian western world?
• Can CGMC make any useful statement about children and evangelism that could bethe beginnings of discussions for the wider Church?
• Is there a place for a Core Skills module that looks at evangelism with children?(What is the good news and how do we share it with children?)
• How might we firmly but tactfully challenge some unhelpful models of evangelismwith children that are already out there and which in fact already have an influenceon the way many churches think?
• What should CGMC be saying about this at a national level?
• How does all this relate to initiatives around the phrase ‘it takes the whole church toraise a child’?
• Can we gather short pieces of writing about this whole issue, representing a varietyof views, and which can then be used to stimulate discussions in our networks?
• Can we produce a conversation starter paper with reflections and questions as result of this conference?

Our second day together was very helpfully set on track by Rosy Nixon, who presented to us some of the thinking around ‘spiritual styles’ as formulated by David Csinos. Rosy unpacked the different ways that people came close to God in terms of their preferences towards the four styles David names: word, emotion, symbol and action. This presents the challenge of course as to how we accommodate all styles and thus work inclusively within our ministries and so it was very useful at this point to break into groups and experience a series of interactive exercises based on the Lord’s prayer that had been created in line with these different spiritual styles.

All this naturally led into how this should and could impact whatever we mean by evangelism with children. Clearly children will encounter and become more deeply aware of God in different ways and at different rates. It is therefore important that practitioners understand the sort of groups they are working, while at the same time, following the pattern of Jesus’s own ministry, recognising that every encounter is unique and needs a unique approach. Thinking all-style rather than all-age worship is a helpful by-product of these insights as well as reflecting on how it might shape our evangelism with and nurture of children. There will be further resources from David Csinos both in future Roots magazines and some articles can be downloaded from the following website: www.davidcsinos.com//publications

On our previous 48-hour CGMC conferences some of our programme has taken place ‘out and about’. This time, both because of the challenge of travel around Devon and, to be honest, the attractiveness of staying at Sheldon House, we stayed put and local people visited us! Katherine Lyddon, part-time children’s adviser for the diocese of Exeter, invited six people from her team around the region to join us and share their stories. First however we heard her own story about her new work and in particular about holiday clubs. She shared her heartache both that large numbers at these once a year events are not the best context to build relationships that can help faith to grow and that even when some children do make the beginning of a faith commitment they are often not followed up. She doubted that the churches even knew how to disciple such children.

We heard of schools work in Honiton and youth work in Sidmouth. Chris and Phil told us about their work on a housing estate in Plymouth emphasising the importance of long term commitment and relationship building. One of the great dangers with any form of evangelism is that things are just simply not followed up and that ‘event Christianity’ still too easily shapes how we work with children. We also heard about flourishing preschool work east Devon although at the same time it was sad to hear from one story how poorly the church councils both understood and supported this sort of work. In her summing up Katherine urged us to take risks, to trust God and to rejoice at everything that God was doing among children; it’s not about relying on what happens in the ‘God-slot’ but rather all our talk should be ‘God-talk’ and all our being with children a God-slot! Drawing on research tools such as the Engel scale, it is clear that many children and families are far more distant from anything to do with our faith than most churches realised. And in her experience most within the fold of the church are caught up with themselves and their own faith journey rather than being caught up in God’s mission.

In the afternoon we heard from two more visitors. Hannah Richards works for the ICE project based in Exeter working with schools in and around that city. Their strap line is ‘bringing faith to life’ as they deliver Christian schools work in a variety of ways. She shared some stories of what God was doing through their core team but also revealed that they are still searching for the right models to move forward, especially as RE in the curriculum is coming under pressure and maybe even the place of collective worship is under threat. Turning to another area of traditional evangelism, Margaret Lilley – who is the Scripture Union team leader for the south-west – shared about her work in this region, focusing on some of the activities she has helped set up and support, including X-site, Kids breakfasts and after school family clubs. She then turned to a particular concern of hers, namely the future of the beach mission, which has always been one distinctive expression of evangelism in this part of the world. The question is, have they had their day? She is doing research into this convinced that there is a future, although clearly so much has changed. Who are they for? Who runs them and why? How can they be followed up? What is their connection to the local church? We heard of bad examples of how this form of evangelism can be something that is little more than Christians parachuting in and out of a place. Margaret did however point to one promising model from the north-east of the UK in Hexham, where whole family mission weeks that have taken place regularly over many years are bearing much fruit.

For the second half of the conference we were in-house, as it were, enjoying a raucous quiz that Shelley had devised with questions of a local flavour and then on the final day we worked more intentionally in groups looking at some key questions, unpacking the meaning and the connections between the words ‘evangelism’ and ‘discipleship’ and then exploring what we wanted to say to the churches and to our networks about these aspects of ministry with children.

There’s no doubt we inevitably left a lot of threads hanging from our three days together; nevertheless, as usual we were all very much encouraged by being able to meet, affirm and support each other in our different ministries around the UK and Ireland. Finally we did also spend some time exploring the ways in which CGMC might develop its own identity more, both within CTBI and as a voice to the churches. These thoughts will be collated and recorded separately and sent round our membership and will be taken forward by the Executive.

We had begun our conference with a short reflective story about a local saint, St Boniface, who came from Crediton not far from where we were staying. He is still recognised abroad and honoured as the English Bishop who came as a missionary to Germany and Holland back in the 9th Century AD. Mission in this period of history was about telling an unknown story and challenging wrong ideas about God. It invited people to listen and respond to the stories of Jesus. In our post Christian era there is clearly a need yet again to find appropriate ways to tell the story of Jesus, once again unknown by so many, and to invite adults and children to respond. In addition it also became clear that evangelism, whatever we think of the concept, must surely take place within a context of making real relationships and thus being alongside people on a journey into faith. Katherine suggested that all evangelism must come out of a passion for God and a passion for people and that its key imperative was ‘to go’, as indeed Jesus asks us to do in the great commission, and to meet people, including children, where they are. She shared with us the following quote from ‘Christianity Rediscovered’ written by the missionary Jesuit priest in east Africa, Vincent Donovan:

‘Do not try to call people to where you are, as beautiful as the place may seem to you. You must have the courage to go with them to a new place that neither you nor they have ever been before.’

We had a running joke during the conference! In a quote related to Wesley’s experience of his ‘conversion’, it is said that his heart was ‘strangely warmed’ when he first understood about God’s particular love for him and God’s calling on his life to go rather than just to stay where he was. Likewise we are in different ways always ‘being evangelised’ and ‘strangely warmed’ by every encounter we have and very often this happens particularly in our encounters with children, who in this way evangelise – are good news – to us. This sort evangelism is at the same time a form of discipleship, as we grow in faith step by step. Although we came to no strong and definite conclusions at the end of the conference, all of us were able to say both jokingly and seriously that our hearts had at various times been strangely warmed by new insights and thoughts, which would inform both our own personal walk with God and our understanding of how we can best support and encourage those we work with.