Matty Bentley and Becky Courtney share with us their passion to reach and disciple 11-18 year-olds and encourage them into growing Christian communities:
Matty is School Missional Lead Chaplain across three CofE Secondary Schools (St Hilda’s, St Margaret’s and Archbishop Blanch) in Liverpool and has been full-time in his role for two and a half years. Matty has plenty of experience in youth work within Churches and schools on the Wirral and within the Liverpool area. He has around 10 years of experience and has a heart for seeing young people be welcomed into a Christian community, allowing them to grow and flourish in the Christian faith. Becky is a School Missional Chaplain working with Matty across the 3 CofE Secondary Schools in Liverpool and has been in her role for two and half years. Becky has been involved in Church ministry since her gap year with Ykids children’s charity and worked in Liverpool and Manchester across several Churches, Primary and Secondary Schools for ten-plus years. Becky is passionate about seeing young people belonging, believing, and becoming followers of Jesus and being part of growing Christian communities. When we saw these roles advertised we knew that our hearts and passions were a great match and we just had to be a part of it.
How do you go about reaching 11-29 years – the missing generation in your roles?
In our roles, we recognise the gap of the missing generation within the life of the Church and have a passion to reach and disciple 11-18 year-olds and encourage them into growing Christian communities.
Young people spend, on average, 32.5 hours at School per week and to reach the young people we need to be in the places they inhabit; in their Schools, being like Jesus and meeting people where they are. We aim to take Jesus to the young people who wouldn’t explore faith or Church otherwise.
We have a missional pathway that plays an important part in encouraging young people to move from hearing about faith to being active participants in a worshipping community. We provide ‘first contact’ events so that we can meet all School students and invite them to our other regular groups. We run ‘sowing’ and ‘reaping’ events for those young people who are engaged and want to grow in faith. We’ve run Youth Alpha as a primary ‘reaping’ event. For those young people who want to grow further and serve we have our ‘keeping’ groups where we disciple and encourage and provide opportunities to serve and use their spiritual giftings. Then we have Youth Church events and groups that we invite young people to regularly. The key is to create relevant and fun events to encourage involvement but also use quality resources and build strong, authentic relationships to help these young people grow in faith and enjoy Church.
What is the partnership between the school and church? How does it work?
With 95% of under-18s not in church, the task of reaching them is huge. But so too is the opportunity, which needs schools and churches to work together in partnership.
Our role as School’s Missional Chaplains is a key part of the Liverpool Next Generation Project development; bridging the gap between school and church. We seek to amplify and multiply existing best practices in CofE Secondary Schools that are linked to Resource Churches and missionally intentional Churches. We aim to give the families of the young people we connect with the best chance of becoming part of a local Church, with further ambition for wider evangelism and discipleship.
We aim to achieve this through delivering relevant youth events throughout the year, fun faith-based youth groups and creating strong pathways into Church by encouraging Churches to prioritise youth work and see young people as a significant part of their growing Church communities. We come alongside families, welcome them into Church and always have a ‘what’s next’ event to invite them along to.
What are the challenges you face?
We interact with young people who have negative thoughts about or experiences of Church. We aim to challenge their negative opinions and provide them with a more positive experience of the Christian faith.
With a staggering number of under-18s not attending church, bridging the gap between Church and School is a big challenge. Depending on the young person’s experience of faith or Church, the gap can be bigger for some than for others.
There are many different groups that happen in school, which sometimes creates diary clashes, meaning that some young people struggle to decide which group to go to.
What are the successes you have had?
We delivered youth Alpha for Sixth Formers in one of the Schools and this saw girls growing in faith and one became a follower of Jesus and is considering baptism. Once youth alpha finished, we delivered a Bible study group within School along with age-specific events at St James in the City Church and a time away to HTB Focus camp last summer. We have since seen four of these girls become part of the worshipping community at St James in the City and one is serving as part of the worship team. They start University in September and have shared that having a strong Christian community has encouraged them to stay in Liverpool - “Found community in this church… encouraged us to stay in Liverpool for uni, this is one of the defining chapters of why we want to stay and has brought friendships because of Alpha and all the different programmes.”
We delivered a Christian Union group after School and one of the young people shared how her Church was unable to offer youth provision. We invited her along to St James in the City Youth Group, she enjoyed it and the following weekend invited her family to Church. Shortly after this they came to the Church weekend away and joined the Church community. Their young person has been part of the School and Church services we have delivered.
We strategised with St James in the City youth team to help bridge the gap between School and Church and have seen St James in the City youth group grow to over 40 young people. We have seen a total of 157 young people engage in weekly Christian discipleship in School and/or Church.
There is so much favour in this project and God is really blessing it through both the opportunities we are creating and being offered. The school staff have given us feedback, expressing how grateful they are for our work and how we are enhancing the young people’s school experience.