What is the Youth Ministry Course all about? Is it worth all the effort? What difference will it make to my work with young people?

Read the stories of these graduates of the course

» David Gordon, Annalong Presbyterian Church

I graduated from the Youth Ministry course and I found it to be the most enjoyable and informative course I have done in many years! We got a leaflet in through Youth Fellowship in our church where I am a leader (I also lead a Youth Club team in Annalong Presbyterian Church) and the course itinerary looked extremely interesting. I did not regret making the decision to join the course at all (well maybe when I was doing my final assignment I thought "perhaps I'm not cut out for this sort of stuff"). But I must have done alright because I passed, and I even got presented with my certificate by the then Moderator, Rt Rev Dr. Alastair Dunlop!

I must say that I really enjoyed all the modules, but I felt I got most out of the Models of Effective Ministry I & II lectures. In the 2nd lecture, David Stanfield even persuaded a number of 'real-life, cutting edge, coalface' youth workers to share their wisdom and experiences with us and it really brought it all to life for me. Since then I have been heavily involved in a new outreach project in our church for young teenagers, where I have already been able to put much of my learning into practice in helping to shape the structure of our outreach.

» Barbara Blair, Ist Presbyterian Church, Islandmagee

When I first enrolled for the Certificate in Youth Ministry Course I really didn’t know what to expect. I must say after the first night I was excited about the prospect of all I was going to learn (although not being the studious type I was unsure how I was going to retain it all). I needn’t have worried - over the 16 weeks we covered a great range of very useful topics which were presented in a very enjoyable way. The one point that sticks out in my mind most is the importance of building relationships with our young people – the fact that if you don’t have a good relationship with the kids then anything you try to teach will be ineffective.

The final assignment was a great way of having to actually analyse the youth strategy in my own church setting and when I did I realised that we had a nice cozy group of ‘interested’/Christian teenagers but we were doing nothing to reach the unchurched youth in the area. From this we decided to take a step of faith and hold an outreach event on a monthly basis which we named ‘The Fringe’. Our aim is to firstly establish relationships with those who are less familiar with anything church related and hopefully through this they will be introduced to the love of Christ.