Just before the school term finished a group of young people met together. We only had 4 short hours together, but in those 4 hours we played, we prayed and we shared with one another.
On Saturday 16 July, young people from Bradford, Rotherham and Sheffield met at Rother Valley Country Park to come together as FORUM for Youth of the Yorkshire Synod. This is a new event and initiative that we hope will grow and develop over the coming years. FORUM for Youth hopes to create a fresh, lively and welcome space for young people to come together from across the synod to share about their faith, their lives and their church and to build meaningful friendships along the way.
The group began by spending time in pairs discussing many strange and serious questions that they were invited to consider about the home town, their church, their favorite people and their favorite animals. Then we were encouraged to get creative and draw different things to represent our thoughts and feelings. It was important that we each were respectful and allowed the space for one another to share as much or as little as we were comfortable with about our drawings. Just before lunch we watched numerous clips from ‘A Star is Born’ and split into groups to discuss this further. We came away from the day with the message that we are all unique, beautiful and talented children made in wonder by an amazing God who loves us. Moreover that we are set apart with a distinct purpose, with meaning and important words to say, ideas to share and lives to live.
It was finally time for us to change into our paddle boarding clothes and get into the water. Luckily it was a beautiful, warm day and the water was pleasant. In fact, many of the group enjoyed deliberately falling off of their boards into the water to cool down!
The next FORUM for Youth will be on Saturday 29 October, 10.30 – 2.30pm at Xscape, Castleford. Please contact Megan Tillbrook 07522220213 / megancyp@urcyorkshire.org.uk for more information.