The Cream Pie Youth Work Challenge

Four years ago at the last session of a holiday club I was running, some of the teenager members of the team took it upon themselves to start a new tradition of ‘cream pie the leader’ i.e. me.

Of course, the six of them couldn’t agree on who got to do the pie-ing and so came to a healthy compromise. They would all do the pie-ing!

Do you know whats worse than a pie in the face? I’ll tell you, SIX cream pies in the face! After the first two I’d inhaled a copious amount of cream into my lungs, after four my nose was numb from impact, and after six I was verging on a near death experience. I couldn’t see, couldn’t breath and was well on they way to cardiac arrest while looking like a giant melting ice cream cone. All this to the deafening sound of  laughter from a hundred children and six highly gratified teenagers.

I was the absolute definition of ‘disorientated.’ Ten minutes later I somehow found myself with towels and hot tea in my office breathing normally with no idea how I got there! I think this is a great illustration of how God works in the lives of young people.

Young People are in such need. Many are disorientated, lost, confused and lonely. They’ve basically been pied in the face by cultural expectations, peer-pressure, media bombardment and low self-esteem.

Youth Workers and the Church need to be the guiding hand to safety, the bringers of towels and hot tea. We need to reach out with hands of grace through a cream-pied mess of chaos and say ‘you are worth it’ and ‘God is enough for you.’

The role of Youth Workers in this generation is not to hurl any more pies, but to get into the mess and bring guidance, wisdom and security that mirrors the Father’s heart for them.

God is doing a new thing through Youth Work in the UK. I want to encourage you to stand in prayer, in service and in passionate giving to take the good news of Jesus Christ relevantly to every young person in Britain.

And please remember, Leave out the cream pies!