We're all at it!

Meetings seem to feature heavily in the set-up of a project of this kind. Oddly for someone trying to launch a youth project I haven't spoken to a single teenager about this yet, apart from my long-suffering foster-teen who I suspect is humouring me whenever I talk about the Cool Box.

First I had a meeting with the local coordinator of the Street Pastors only to find that they are expanding their project to a pubbing and clubbing street very near to us. She was very encouraging and in turn referred me to the local Salvation Army Citadel who plan on opening up their Community Café on late Friday and Saturday nights soon. Then I had coffee with the youth worker at a church up the road who has been running a youth centre on Friday nights for some time now.

It feels like God has been talking to all of us individually about this area and now we have caught up with him and are starting to talk to each other.

Getting organised

I am constantly amazed at how much can be achieved when God is giving us a good, hard shove. I have done more in a few days than I usually do in months!

In spare moments I am emailing, on days off I have meetings...it may sound like your idea of hell but actually I'm loving it. Before I became a teacher I was a Store Manager and my favourite part of that job was recruitment, team building, training and coaching and mentoring. I hadn't realised that it was something I missed until now.

Tonight our tiny, fledgling team met over a plate of chilli to discuss how things are shaping up and we finished the evening feeling very excited and importantly we have set a date for our first outing onto the common. It will only be a research walk to see where the young people are and how many of them are around but it is a solid, real date in our diaries...this is no longer just an idea.

In search of the two "P"s ...........

.....people and prayer!

The first is a big challenge but I am encouraged that so far at least nobody that I have approached has said no. We are currently a team of four and I am really grateful that even three other people are enthusiastic about joining me on this journey into new territory. OK so we are talking to teenagers on the seafront not circumnavigating the world, but this is still a new concept for our church.

I was given some good advice about recruiting volunteers, that I should be direct and approach the people on my wish-list and just tell them that I want them on my team. This is not my style and I'm not finding it at all easy but this whole project is a "step out of the boat" moment so I should get used to being out of my comfort zone!

Having prayer support for the Cool Box is crucial and seeking it has been central in my plans. As soon as it becomes a secondary concern we are really in trouble. We have some real prayer warriors at our church, in the shape of the Intercessory Prayer Group, and I am relieved that they share my enthusiasm for what we are doing. We also had a prayer station at our Mission Sunday service tonight. In fact praying for each other was a big feature of tonight's service and I was blessed with words of encouragement from several of the congregation.

Those of you reading this who want to add your prayers to ours may like some points to focus on. Right now our main concerns are:

• Finding the right volunteers.
• Arranging appropriate training.
• Finding the right designer for our logo and flyers and a supplier for uniforms and ID badges.
• Finding the right volunteers (Yes, so important it's on here twice!)

More news soon..............

So it began, like most things do, with an idea.

Our church had a vision weekend and a guest speaker encouraged us to think of an unmet need on our doorstep and then to begin to witness to our community by meeting those people at their point of need.

As a secondary school teacher and a member of the church youth team I suppose it’s not surprising that the first thing that came to my mind was a safe place where teenagers could hang out with their friends.You see our church is just a short walk away from a beach, a common and a skate park – all areas where young people congregate in the evenings.

It wasn’t just that speaker who had got me thinking. I had been helping with our Friday night outreach project, the Friday Fridge. Essentially the Fridge is a late night café and chill-out space staffed by church volunteers. It opens from 10.30pm till 1.30am on a Friday night and although it is aimed to appeal to adults in their 20s to 40s heading home from the pub it primarily attracted under 18s in its first year. In fact by 10.15pm a crowd of up to 30 young people would often be sitting outside the Church doors and would impatiently knock if we weren’t open on the dot of 10.30. Most of them had spent the evening with friends on the common but as it became darker and colder welcomed a coffee, a bacon sandwich and a comfy cushion to sit on while they continued to chat. We were basically providing a warm, safe, alcohol-free venue for them. On one particular evening a teenage girl even celebrated her birthday in the Fridge café zone, bringing a cake and telling her friends to meet her there.

As we had regularly prayed that God would bring the right individuals to our door, those who he had selected, I began to wonder if he had had young people in mind all along.

In our Youth Team meetings we started throwing about ideas. So, what if we created a “Portable Fridge” which we could take to the common, the seafront or anywhere else where groups of young people were? What did those young people need? What if we took bottles of water? Doughnuts? A frisbee or kite? Would they talk to us? When it began to get dark and cold would they come back to the Fridge for a coffee and a bacon sarnie? Would they talk to our Christian volunteers and discover they were fairly normal after all?

It looks like we may soon find out.