Offering youth an alternative
We did the opposite of what churches usually do
We decided to think about church as a circle. Usually in the middle are your pastors, your board, and it goes out from there, and then your congregation, and you’re trying to send people out into the community. We decided to do a model of the opposite of that. At the centre of our space, all our time and energy, would be the lost, the broken, and those who have needs in our community.
We were given a building when we arrived here in 2005 that we renovated and turned into a centre. Everyone knows it in Glace Bay. We gave our space to the community and we happen to have church there on Sunday. We decided at the centre of what we do is no longer going to be us.
Most churches pray about how they can connect with people in their community, but our community is with us every day. You don’t have to wonder how you’ll connect with someone. We’re doing that every day because they are there. We planted that way. Everyone thinks it’s normal here.
A hard calling
Someone asked me a while ago to describe our youth ministry. I said, “I think God sent us here to save people’s lives.” They asked me if I meant eternally. I said no. They were expecting a spiritual answer, but in my first 10 years in Glace Bay I didn’t do a funeral for anyone old. It was mostly overdose or addiction-related deaths.
We thought, “If the Kingdom of God is going to be at work in Cape Breton, what will it look like?” The word that came to us was freedom. Our role is going to be to seek after the Kingdom of God, and for us that will look like fewer kids with addictions and fewer kids dying. There’s times when we’ve gone through seasons where a lot of bad things have happened in a row. That’s been tough. We knew coming here we’d have to have persistence. Nothing is fast.
What it looks like program-wise
We have some sport programs that are simply just to give kids something to do. We have levels of programming we call our life skills programs, teaching kids how to deal with a terrible home life or cook something on a low budget.
Years ago, right after we started, we began a Monday night youth group. Within a year it went from ten kids to a hundred. Those were all kids coming to the youth centre and we told them, “On Monday nights this is what we are going to be doing. We share about faith.” We’ve seen a whole youth ministry grow out of just serving the young people in our town. Serving our community has been the open door to see ministry happen. /FT