RELATIONSHIPS
I still have Christians ask me when we are going to introduce the ‘Gospel’ through our Romance Academy (Relationships and Sex Education project) work.
It concerns me that there is still a belief in some churches (and therefore some youth work) that we don’t need to be talking about sex and relationships with our young people or that it isn’t an important dimension to mission or discipleship. Somehow it is an issue ‘out there’ that is best handled by others.
I remember the murmur of shock and awe that rippled round the room at a youth work conference recently when a speaker asked which relationship is more honouring to God; casual sex between heterosexuals or loving sex in a long-term homosexual relationship? In that context, the answer was less important than the opportunity it allowed for these youth workers to grapple with a complex issue that affects us all. We just don’t create enough space for youth workers (let alone Christians) to think widely around an issue.
A new pattern of sexual life is developing in our world. Attitudes and behaviours are changing, increases in teen STI and pregnancy rates are driving policy, children who have been trafficked move into our neighbourhoods. How we respond will determine whether young people see the church as having anything relevant and living to offer them.
The Government’s target of cutting teenage pregnancies rates in half by 2010 is going to be missed by a mile and as there could be a new Government in place by next year, there will be a huge review of how to tackle teenage sexual health issues. I hope that relationships-positive education will be top of the new agenda and I can’t wait to explore the role that Christian-shaped Relationships Education can play in this.
My dream is that we show ourselves to be the best at producing and delivering Relationships and Sex Education in formal and informal settings. That our theology of human sexuality and identity will place us in a unique position to speak to every strata of society about what makes a relationship (and society) work well; that we will show we are a community of people committed to holy living and expressing abundant grace to each other; that young people who know the pain and abandonment of unhappy or violent relationships will find in the church a hope and a home. We need to get ourselves ready.
Because in a refugee camp in Somalia, Iman is giving birth to her sixth child, Abdullah. In a few years time a well-dressed man will come along offering to pay her ‘good money’ for her son. Iman will agree, as ‘well-dressed man’ promises a Western education and new start in a different country. So, Abdullah will be loaded into a van and begin the long journey to the UK where he will become lost among the thousands of others who fall into child trafficking every year. To pay back his ‘debt’ he will be sold for sex and remain lost until one day, he will turn up at your dropin project. Will you be ready for him?
Because Kayleigh, who loves her Bratz doll and wants to be a super star, will get a laptop for her 6th birthday. She will chat online to her friends for hours and on her 12th birthday she will arrange to meet a boy she knows online. She will meet him and discover too late that he isn’t a boy, but a man. As the years go by, she will bunk school and put herself at more and more risk. Everyone will be at a loss to know how to help her and although agencies will be involved it will feel like nothing is working. You will see her on a bus, fighting off a man who claims to be her boyfriend. Will you be ready for her?
Because this summer, the courts will finally decide that Jake needs to be placed with an adoptive family. His new family will take him to church with them and he will grow up learning about and living for Jesus. When he is 17 he will get baptised, meet Paul and fall in love. Confused and guilt ridden he will look round for someone to turn to. Will we be ready for him?
Because young people in your town, village, city, church will want to see authentic faith that is modelled in the lives and relationships of real people. When they find it, they will be inspired. They may even ask questions.
Because Jesus will ask us to do what He has always asked of us: to bind up the broken hearted, to sit with the abused and violated, to walk alongside the teenage mum, to comfort the boy whose girlfriend had an abortion, to teach a new (but very old) way of having relationships, to model intimacy in ways that honour God, to mentor a teenager struggling with masturbation, to include the parentless in our families, to build the Kingdom of God here, now. And He will ask us to do this as a whole church community.
In the words of David Cooperrider, ‘…the best societal learning has always occurred when three generations come together in contexts of discovery and valuing – the child, the elder, and the middle adult. Where appreciation is alive and generations are re-connected through inquiry, hope grows.’