What is Youth Alpha?
Youth Alpha is a monthly session we run on a Friday with the Youth that we started earlier this year, in February. It is a time for each young person to develop their faith journey as we follow an Alpha course aimed at young people. Youth Alpha themselves say “Alpha Youth is a place for guests to explore faith on their own terms. Everyone is welcome - no matter their background or beliefs". We have created smaller groups split by their friendships, ages and faith. This allows for more relatable conversations in each group and as they are closer in age, they are more likely to open up, as they are with the people they trust most within Friday Night Youth. We aim to be able to create a space that encourages questions and discussion with other young people - led by a member of our Youth Team to facilitate. Splitting up the youth into smaller groups allows us as leaders to understand each young person's needs and how we can further support them in their faith journey. We hope that this time is encouraging them, as young Christians, to explore their relationship with Christ.
Our Alpha session runs slightly differently to our Friday Night Youth evenings, rather than beginning the evening with free-time, we encourage the young people into the church after spending some communal time together over a hot chocolate. Then, we play a game as a group to allow space for the young people to build their bonds with one another. After the game has ended, we spend a period of time in worship.
Each month we aim to find different ways of worship to show the young people that they can worship Jesus in many ways and that they are able to find a method they enjoy most. We have recently made ‘thankfulness bracelets’ and posters. Each bead represents something that each young person is thankful for. When they wear it around they can be reminded of all the positive things around them. The posters are a great way for any young person to express what they are thankful for. They can collate their thoughts by drawing and writing what they are thankful for until there is a collage of all the things that they are grateful for. They wrote about their friendships, their youth group, their leaders and as always lots of them mentioned that there were snacks.
Next in the session we begin to watch the youth alpha video for the week; we pause briefly for a small discussion and ice-breaker. At this time we delve into our snacks, each week we follow the country in the video - when we were in Japan we brought some Japanese biscuits and crisps for the young people to eat for the rest of the video. Once the video has finished we lead into our larger discussion questions/ topic which is where the young people can ask questions about the video or something they have faced in their faith over the month and would like to explore. Each group has their own space, some groups leave the main church to go to their room which they can arrange in a way that best suits their group.
Before the video begins, our older group leaves to continue the Alpha course they have been following. After a few sessions of doing Youth Alpha, they felt that they were not connecting with the youth alpha course as it is targeted to our younger youth. They swapped to the other alpha course which suited their need, which was to ask wider reaching questions. They follow the same structure as the rest of the youth group, though they follow the mature course. Their most recent sessions have covered how God guides us leading to a discussion about how they can discern God’s guidance, as well as discussing how God may ‘shut a door’ in situations where he does not want us or isn’t a part of his plan for us. However, most of their curiosity lies in exploring the subject of heaven and hell, meaning most of their discussions stray to this topic as they always have new questions and ideas. Their most recent discussion was whether Hell was endothermic (absorbs heat/energy) of exothermic (gives off heat/energy). This just revealed how much depth this group seeks to discuss and the maturity of their curiosity in faith.
Since beginning this course, we have covered who Jesus is, we explored Him “through history, his teachings and his goodness”. We then discussed how Jesus is more than any other historical figure through the resurrection and how that he is the centrepiece of the Christian Faith. For our non-Christian members of youth, they were happy to start with a session that allowed them to explore the foundations of the Christian faith as they may not have known them before. We also discussed what love looks like, the meaning of real unconditional and sacrificial love. Also, exploring God’s forgiveness and grace while discussing sin. Our next session covered why you would want a relationship with God; what the meaning is to be invited into a relationship with Jesus and how it may change us. Later we discussed what a relationship with God can look like and how we can practice and grow our faith with Him through exploring prayer and the Bible. On the Youth weekend away we covered who the Holy Spirit is and how you can be filled with it. We allowed the young people to learn about the nature of the Holy Spirit and what it can do in your life so that they could choose if they wanted to invite the Holy Spirit into their lives. As a leader this was a beautiful moment to see; young people stepping forward to receive the holy spirit. Spaces of silence were filled with young people praying for each other so that they could fill themselves with the spirit.
From our time discussing and exploring who Jesus is and all that he can do in our lives, we have seen an increased level of engagement in discussions and an influx of complex questions. One question that stuck out was from one of our youngest members of youth; it was their first time in their small group covering what evil can look like. They asked the question: why was there a fallen angel and why God would allow it to happen? This inspired a conversation about free will and how that in itself shows God's love for us, that we are not forced to follow, that we can choose to love him back. This brings immense joy to us as leaders as we can see the inspiring amounts of growth each one of the young people have achieved, and the foundations that they are building as strong members of the body of Christ.
Our next sessions will discuss how God helps us overcome Evil by exploring where we see it in the world and what the bible says we can do to face it. We will discuss how to arm ourselves in preparation for the tactics evil may use to pull us away from God. We will then explore how God heals today and how he invites us to play a part in the healing of others; how healing is presented in the bible and the stories of Jesus’ miraculous healing. Our last session will allow the young people to reflect on what we have covered and explore the idea of a church family and how church is not just a building but the people within it, and that we are all members of one community as Jesus has called us all to be a part of His body.
If you've missed them, read our past blogs:
Our Youth Weekend Away