When Students Show Up

At Step, our constant hope and prayer is to build a bridge from schools to our churches over which young people feel safe, loved and curious enough to travel.

So what happens when young people suddenly decide to come to your church?

This happened recently and it took me by surprise! Should it have?

Two eleven-year-old young people, who I’d just met at our Tuesday Step Up Day in our local Markyate Village School, came along to our Sunday morning service at church. Prior to Tuesday I had never seen these boys before and wouldn’t have known their names.

One of their peers noticed them showing an interest in some of the Bible content in one of our lessons and told them a bit more about our church and the activities we sometimes run. Their eyes lit up with glee and the end result was that they wanted to come and be at church for themselves - they didn’t want to wait for a parent to bring them.

I’m suddenly aware of some of our habits at church, the language we use, the songs we sing, and I can’t help wondering how alien this could feel to a fresh-faced youngster with no previous religious background. Questions like “Will other people also make them feel welcome?” dance across my mind. Or “Are our Sunday morning activities for children enticing and interesting enough?”.

Will they come back again? At the point of writing this I cannot give an answer, but I am hopeful they will. Please join me in praying that wherever they find themselves to be spiritually, Jesus will be revealed to them and we as a church will be welcoming, nurturing and homely