The YES team do fantastic work serving the young people of Sussex, helping youngsters on their faith journey and supporting local youth workers with a whole host of initiatives, summarised by the team below.

The Diocese of Chichester has decided to abolish this vital team. Please sign this petition urging the Diocese to reverse this decision. Find out more

May Camp.  We have great plans for next year, our theme is “Echoes in Eternity” a whole bunch of groups who have not been before have indicated their interest in joining us.  Also, we recently received 3 years of support from the Diocesan Mission Fund to help us grow it!  There are some puzzled looks on our faces as we try to grasp how joined up decision making is in this organisation!!

Household of Faith.  This is to be a truly stunning conference next year – with John Westerhoff as our key note speaker, a load of interest from around the country and other great contributors in the pipeline.  This is a team effort, how will one person pull this off?  I have received mixed messages about our future planning – in that, only in September were Bishops discussing the conference nationally and our own Diocesan Bishop has made some time in his diary to be there!  Yet, the team organising it have all lost their jobs!!

Encounter Gap Year.  This is a scheme that has received national recognition, been copied and adapted by other Diocese – and continues to run well.  Three great young adults are on the scheme this year at various parishes. We have people applying for next year, what can we tell them?

Fuel.  A relatively new initiative, we have been looking at how we invest in our 14+ young people across the Diocese, bringing them all together . . . A retreat is planned for March 2014 – Don’t see how that can happen.

St Bartz.  I am chair of Trustees for our amazing retreat centre, it is part of (or has been) my job – but it is so much more than that.  It has been a special place for young people and youth groups for the last 10 years; 750 have stayed on average each year . . . I don’t know how this vital work continues.  I was already informed that when Pat retires at the end of this year I could not replace her (Pat has been the backbone of the centre, looking after the accounts, bookings and making the place run) . . .

Breakout.  This has been part of my ministry for the last few years.  On the village where we live, we (myself, Lisa my wife and the In Laws) have been running a kids club . . . we have over 30 children on the books and regularly see 25 each week.  As a development of this we began “Franklands Village Family Worship” just over a year ago, once a month on a Sunday afternoon.  This work has taken time to grow, we are using the Good Shepherd Church on Franklands Village (which the Diocese closed about 10 years ago) and there is MASSIVE potential around what might be just round the corner . . but this news received today puts all this in jeopardy.

The Week in Week Out Support for the Local Church.  This has been the “bread and butter” work for our team, we engage weekly with dozens of our churches around the Diocese.  Just this last week, advising churches on resources for Christmas; liaising with other agencies about running some training for parishes engaged in rural youth work; discussions with statutory and wider voluntary sector about how the church is stepping up as services are cut; Helping parishes explore how they might explore employing a youth worker; helping churches plan for their involvement next year in HOPE 2014; a resource e-news for advent with loads of stuff that is helpful for engaging with children and young people.  Spoke at four seminars for Youth Work the Conference, which also equipped a bunch of our local volunteer youth leaders – with a discount tickets!  Arranged for an 18 year old to deliver the one minute sermon on BBC Sussex (youngest ever to do so) Just finishing off some Bible reading notes for CWR (a partnership I have developed that promotes the great YPs – Bible Reading notes for 11-14 year olds) we are now editing the notes and writing the “insite” pages for it.  This has a reach of 5000 young people around the world . . . . mix in with that phone calls, emails etc.  That is just in the last week!