WE HAVE A NEW WEBSITE

It has been a busy year and a year of change for our Youth Group, with some exciting adventures ahead. Highlights of the year included visits to Bristol and Oxford on the themes of Colston and C S Lewis respectively. Many thanks to Beth Fisher, Anna Jay and Anthony Buckley for hosting us. We also had an energetic long weekend away in the October half term at Liddington PGL Activity Centre described by one attendee as “involving lots of dangling”. I am grateful to John Hadley for volunteering to help out on the trip. We had some firm favourite activities including pancakes, a pilgrimage around Whitchurch visiting various
2022 Annual Report
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parishioners – thank you John Mariner, Gill Bilton and Sophie Lloyd for hosting us, and a summer BBQ. Over the summer we said goodbye to a number of our older members and also to Jill Walker who had been kindly helping every week with refreshments and also supporting the Baptist church members of our youth group. I am hugely grateful to Sophie Lloyd for stepping in to co-lead the group with me and to Esther Jay for stepping up as youth leader for the group. We also started the new academic year with a new name. Our young people decided on Youth of God for the group name. We are currently designing a new logo and branding to go with the new name.
We have been developing the content of our fortnightly meetings and, with the new leadership team, have been designing a programme with themes for each term. For the Autumn term of 2022 our theme was faith journeys. We were delighted to be able to share our exploration of this theme in a service led by Youth of God with preaching led by Esther Jay and Miriam Fisher. This was a very special service, entirely led by the members of YoG. I am grateful to the music band Matthew and Carolyn Jay, Stephen Preece, Nicky Smallwood and Paul Barber, and the sound team Andrew Monk and Phil Davies for their support in making this such a good service. Such a success, in fact, that we have established a youth led service as a regular feature once a term. In 2023 we will be exploring the themes of Calling and Pilgrimage and expect to welcome new Yr 6 members from the summer term onwards. We have also started hearing the faith stories of members of the congregation and I am grateful to all those who have agreed to speak to our young people to share their experience. It has been a great encouragement and we have all benefitted from the intergenerational interaction.