NewsletterCroydon Youth for Christ

Winter 2011/12

WWW.CROYDONYFC.CO.UK

CONT

ACT U

S CROYDON YFCCHRIST CHURCH

SUMNER ROADWEST CROYDON

CR0 3LJ

0770 100 9320admin@croydonyfc.co.uk

www.croydonyfc.co.ukSenior Youth Worker & Acting Centre

Director: Mrs Naomi George

Student Schools and Youth Worker:Mr Dan Mapstone

Administrator:Mrs Clare Hutton

Chair of Trustees: Dr Nick ShepherdTrustee Secretary: Mrs Hazel Whiting

Treasurer: Mr Stephen Goudge

Trustees: Miss Claire Bent,Mr Ronnie Campbell DI

ARY

DATES

5-12 February 2012:Nomad Mission in Croydon

Tuesday 21 February 2012:Croydon Be The Change

Interest Meeting(Emmanuel South Croydon)

Saturday 17 March:Engage Youthwork Training

Advanced Notice:

Friday 25 May 2012First Birthday Celebration

(Christ Church West Croydon)

Sunday 13 May 2012In It Together

(Selhurst park)

Here from Our Chair of Trustees, Nick Shepherd on page 3.

Read all about Playstation Youth Project on page 4

Find Out all about the new stuff we have planned for 2012 on page 5

Catch Up with everything that went on during our Nomad Mission week

on pages 6&7Gain an in site into the week we

spent in North Wales at YFC Conference on page 8

Get praying for the work of Croydon YFC... there are some pointers for

you on page 9Let us introduce you to the newest member of the Croydon YFC Team:

Introducing Clare Hutton on page 10!Find out about what’s going on with

our work in Croydon College and some of our plans for the local

schools on page 11and on the back cover... discover

more about our plans to Be The Change in 2012!

In This Edition of CYFC News...

How many Facebook friends do you have? How many people follow you on Twitter? ...OK – so perhaps you aren’t someone who is constantly linked in, blogging or posting...

. . . In that case are you part of a neighbourhood organisation?Do you lead a church home group?Is there a notice board at your workplace, or in your kitchen?

However you are connected Croydon YFC needs your help. We need you to help us connect with more people in our area who are interested in investing in young people, encouraging their aspirations and  challenging them to think about and act out faith. Croydon YFC is already connecting with over 70 young people a month.

Every week our volunteers and workers meet young people in colleges and schools, on estates and in clubs linked to local churches. Through the relationships we form with these young people, we are already making a difference in their lives.

Whether through real or virtual networks, we need your help in telling people who don’t yet know about our work; people who are interested in positive actions to support young people’s well-being and creative waves of proclaiming the Good News. So, pass on this newsletter to a neighbour or colleague, like us on Facebook or tweet out our website. Invite myself or Naomi to come to talk to your home group, church council or neighbourhood group. More people in Croydon need to hear good news. We have good news to share, please help us share it.

12

Keep up to date with what we are up to onand! ! ! search for Croydon Youth for Christ or @croydonyfc and keep up to date!

3Pray Continuously!

Paul tells us to, Jesus taught us to, its good enough for us! Sign up to receive the CYFC Prayer Diary and Pray!

Become a Regular Supporter...!

Of course you can always support us financially! Giving £5, £10 or £15 per month will make such a difference to the work we do!

Update from the CYFC Office

Nick Shepherd(Chair of Trustees)

On 12 January 2012 we C e l e b r a t e d o u r fi r s t a n n i v e r s a r y r u n n i n g Playstation Youth Club in partnership with Chr ist Church, West Croydon. The year has had its challenges... but the highlights have outweighed them ten fold!

Some of the biggest highlights have been over the last three months. In early November we had a bonfire party... sparklers, toasted marshmallows, generally just standing around the fire keeping warm! It was a fun evening! A few of the young people told us they had never toasted a marshmallow before, and to start with the concept did baffle a few of them, but with over 50 marshmallow skewers being eaten between them I think it would be safe to say they liked them!

Our other two highlights of recent times both came within a week of one another just before Christmas.

A number of the young people have been asking us for months if we could go on an ice-skating trip, so on 10 December, we took them up to the Tower of London for the day

to go ice-skating! It was a brilliant day, we had a very nice lunch out which was a great opportunity to chat with the young people, and then a fun yet cold afternoon of skating followed!

To end an amazing term we had a massive Christmas dinner for the final youth night before the Christmas break. Cooking a roast for 24 was

definitely a challenge... but it was such good fun! Over dinner discussions about what we were hopeful for, prayer and what the record number of roast potatoes you could eat in one sitting made for a fun and God centred evening! It was a great end to an amazing year!!

Now into the second year of running Playstation we are looking at how we develop the group to provide for the needs of the young people who attend, not just on a T h u r s d a y n i g h t b u t t h ro u g h t h e week. Please pray for us as we seek God in this and as we listen to the young people who we work with.

Playstation

Croydon YFC we are very excited to have launched Transition: Youth Cafe in partnership with St John the Evangelist in Upper Norwood! Starting just after Christmas the cafe has been set up to engage with young people from the Phil Edwards Pupil Referral Unit and also Harris City Academy Crystal Palace and Harry Academy South Norwood. So far it has been a real success and we are looking forward to where God wants to take it over the next

T R A N S I T I O N Y O U T H C A F E

Croydon YFC have been working in partnership with West Wickham and Shirley Baptist Church to bring Starbucks Youth to West Wickham High Street once a month, transforming the usual look of Starbuck Coffee Shop into a Youth Club for the night. At the Launch Night in January we had a good number of young people come, chill out, drink copious amounts of coffee and dance about on the Wii! It was a great night and we are very much looking forward to the next couple of events!

S T A R B U C K S Y O U T H

C R O Y D O N B E T H E C H A N G EURGENT INSTRUCTIONS....!!!!

1. GRAB DIARY, iPHONE, HTC OR OTHER LIFE ORANGISING DEVICE2. TURN TO 6 AUGUST 2012.

3. GET A LARGE MARKER PEN OR HIGHLIGHTER4. WRITE “CROYDON BE THE CHANGE 2012” ACROSS THE 6-8 AUGUST 2012.

5. SEND NAOMI AN EMAIL TELLING HER YOU HAVE DONE THE ABOVE 6. AWAIT FURTHER INSTRUCTIONS...

(ALTERNATIVELY YOU CAN TURN TO PAGE 12 AND FIND OUT A BIT MORE!)

N E W I N T W E N T Y T W E L V EWell 2011 was a busy and varied year for Croydon YFC... But we don’t want to rest on our laurels just because we have passed into a new year... We want to keep the youth-work we are doing as fresh, innovative, new and interesting as we can for the young people of Croydon. Somethings that we are doing this year are carrying on from last year, some of it is new but already ‘set in stone’ as to how and when... other ideas are exactly that, ideas floating around in Naomi, Dan and the trustees wild imaginations waiting to be able to become a reality...! We’ll let you know when they are closer to reality... but until then, take a look at our first three new ideas for twenty twelve!

what happened whenFrom 6-12 February 2012, Dan and Naomi had the privilege of working with the Nomad team (Erik, Sammy and Phil) across Croydon and Chislehurst (with Chislehurst YFC) taking the good news to young people through football, in a metal cage!

Nomad is a touring team of British YFC who travel around the UK to local YFC Centres, Schools, Churches and Festivals sharing the good news of Christ in a really creative and exiting way. The football is 2v2 which means its more about ball control and skill than normal football and the addition of some fun rules means the game is always wide open, even if you are 10-0 down!!

It was really hard work, but we can honestly say it has been one of the best weeks since Croydon YFC launched nine months ago!

To give you a quick insight into our week over the seven days we put the cage up (and took it down) seven times... cleared a road from the ice and snow to get the trailer out of Crawley... stood outside in temperatures of -9ºC... Drank copious amounts of tea and coffee... and refereed and played over 200 games of cage football with over 120 young people from Croydon and Chislehurst!

Thinking back over the week there were too many great things that happened to just pick one highlight, so we have picked one from each day...

Monday: After digging the trailer out of the snow in Crawley we had the privilege of working with Purley Baptist Church’s NRG Cell Group... cage football and bible study, brilliant start to the week!

came to Croydon!Tuesday: Even though it was -4ºC we spent four hours out on the Edgebury Estate with Chislehurst YFC playing football with a number of young people. While we were out it was great that Dan was able to share his testimony with one of the teenagers involved in the gang culture on the estate.Wednesday: Snow and Ice meant that our PE lesson takeover at Phil Edwards PRU were cancelled but we were able to spend some time in the afternoon with the young people from Phil Edwards and Harris Crystal Palace at Transition Youth Cafe Thursday: Back to Chislehurst again today partnering with Chislehurst YFC and Coopers College to take an enrichment session for the school. 35 manic year 7-9’s all playing 2 and 3 a-side football... great fun!Friday: On Friday we spent the evening with New Life Christian Centre at ‘The Warehouse’... The faces on the two young people who won the cage football competition were priceless, never seen two people so happy to win a football competition!Saturday: Was freezing... in fact -9ºC but that didn’t stop the boys from the boys brigade at Brighton Road Baptist Church and Emmanuel South Croydon as they took part in our open cage competition.

All in all it was a fantastic week and I can not wait to have the Nomad team back next year for another awesome week!!! Thanks Guys!

YFC Conference 2012The first week of January for some is an absolute drag, getting back into the swing of ‘normal life’ after the fun of the Christmas and New Year break... But for the staff of Youth for Christ across the UK the first week in January is anything but a drag!

For five days, over 400 staff, volunteers, board members, associated organisations and family members come together in a castle in North Wales for a week of teaching, worship, covenanting, networking and sharing as the whole of the YFC Family in the UK!

This year was a phenomenal week, teaching bought to us by the one and only Danielle Strickland who was absolutely inspirational and made us question what we are doing and how we are doing it in such a positive way! Worship was lead by Andy Smith, who again, was just amazing at leading us in to that place, so that God could do some serious work within us!

All in all the whole week was just amazing, we met some great new people, caught up with some old friends, prayed lots, dreamed dreams, saw visions for Croydon YFC and generally came away from the whole week fired up and raring to go, on a whole new level.

On the final morning, Dan (along with the other London Centre Directors) got to share with everyone, about one young person who we work with and ask them to pray into their life! It was such a powerful time and I urge those of you who took named post-it notes at our Christmas event to be praying in ernest for those young people... if you would like to be given a young person to pray for please get in touch and one of the team can send you someone to hold up in prayer!

The covenant service on the final night, was one of the most powerful things I have ever been privileged to be part of... the words spoken, the sharing of communion, the songs sung, the voices raised together was just so powerful! 2012 is going to be an AMAZING 12 months... it might be busy, it might be sports mad... but never mind all that... in this year we will see young people saved, young people taken back into life from the edge of death, young people re-committing themselves to the Father and young people changing their generation in the Name of Jesus!!!!

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Points for Prayer!Pray for Naomi, Dan and Clare as they continue to work for Croydon YFC. Pray that they continue to grow as a team and continue to be effective in the work they are doing.

Finance is still a big prayer point for Croydon YFC, in short, we need to double our monthly giving. Please prayerfully consider if you can help us hit this target.

Pray for Nick, Claire, Ronnie, Stephen and Hazel as they continue to lead Croydon YFC. Pray for them as they make decisions about the work we are involved in going forward.

Pray for church youth-workers across Croydon: Mike Rutt, Sara Kennett, Roland King, Claire Bent, Joseph Bediako, Lindsey Macfarlane, Mark Rossell and Mark Humm.

Pray for Naomi and her husband Stephen as they are in the process of buying a house. Pray this is quick and not to stressful!

Thank God for all the work that Croydon YFC did in 2011 and for all the amazing volunteers that made it happen and for all the fantastic young people we met along the way!

IF YOU WOULD LIKE TO RECEIVE OUR MONTHLY PRAYER LETTER PLEASE EMAIL

ADMIN@CROYDONYFC.CO.UK OR CONTACT THE OFFICE ON 07701009320.

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Account No:Sort Code:Please pay Croydon Youth for Christ, PO Box 657, 60 Whitgift Centre, Croydon, CR0 1UQ

Account number 29273568 Sort Code 77–30– 01

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If you Gift Aid your donation, Croydon YFC will receive an additional 25p for every £1 you give. Croydon YFC claims tax relief of 25p, on every pound give

If you would like to make a one off donation you are more than welcome to do so. Please make cheques payable to ‘Croydon Youth for Christ’. Please remember to still sign the gift aid declaration, so we can claim back the tax.

IntroducingClare HuttonClare is joining the Croydon YFC team one afternoon a week as our Administrator from the end of February. She will be dealing with general enquiries for the centre and helping with other admin tasks around the centre... Clare loving says that she’s just doing all the jobs that Naomi and Dan don’t want to do... but we promise this is not true!Clare is married to Phil and they have two children, Liam and Fern. Clare worked with Naomi and the volunteers from CYFC and Christ Church during the summer running our riot relief centre and has been a great support to the work of Croydon YFC since then.We are very excited to welcome Clare to the team! If you would like to drop clare an email welcoming her or picking her brain her email is admin@croydonyfc.co.uk. Clare will be in the office from 1pm until 4:30pm every Tuesday.

Quick Questions:Which church do you attend?: At the moment West Croydon Baptist Church – but on the move again.What do you like to do in your spare time: Bake!What do you think is the best thing about the Croydon? Diverse cultures and food!and the worst thing? Concrete buildings from the 1960’sWhat are you most excited about your new role with Croydon YFC? Finding out about the amazing youth work going on in Croydon and helping to make it even more wide-spread!And most importantly.... what is your favourite ice cream flavour? COFFEE!

Schools & College Work Update

CALLING ALL HOUSEGROUPS AND

CELLGROUPSPray for schools fortnight is 6-20 May 2012... and we would love it if you could dedicate one house-group/cell-group meeting to praying for the secondary schools across

Croydon.If you would like to join us in prayer please get in touch with Dan Mapstone and he will send you a pray for schools: Croydon

Prayer pack!

SCHOOL REPRESENTATIVES NEEDED!!

Do you go to school?Do you work in one?

Could you keep Croydon YFC up to date with things we can be praying for at your school?

Yes? Excellent!Drop Dan an email and we’ll explain what happens next!

Its been a busy few weeks for the Croydon College Chaplaincy team but its great that the work is still going strong!We had a brilliant Christmas Event for the college the week before they broke up for the holidays! Giving out over loads of chocolate and 400 Christmas cards telling the students of the true meaning of Christmas, while singing some of our favourite Christmas Carols “flash-mob style” in the College Foyer! It was a great way to bless the students and the staff and share about the true meaning of Christmas.Dan and Naomi also took part in Faith Awareness week at the College in January, answering questions about the Christian Faith and hearing answers to some of the “BIG” Questions that we posed to them!

Keep praying!!!

2012CROYDONbe the change

[ T R A N S F O R M A T I O N T H R O U G H S E R V I N G ]

Come and join us for an Initial Interest Meeting Wednesday 21 March 2012 at Emmanuel South Croydon, 20:00 until 21:30

For more information contact Naomi George or Mike Rutt:Naomi: 07701009320 or naomi@croydonyfc.co.ukMike: mike@emmanuelcroydon.org.uk www.croydon-bethechange.co.uk

What were you doing on August 8th 2011? 

I was coming home from holiday in Switzerland, following the latest news updates on Twitter, reading about riotous youths ransacking the town; seeing the pictures of Reeves Corner on burnt to the ground; and trying to work out which station to get off the train. The pictures that I saw that night will forever be engrained in my brian. 

As will the news headlines and reports from the next days and weeks. How I read and saw politicians and broadcasters gave up on a generation. Told us that they were ‘lost generation’ beyond help

Beyond Help? Lost Generation? No Hope? Really? That’s not what I see! 

What will you be doing on the 6-8th August 2012?

We would love for you to partner with, and join us for an event called ‘Be The Change’. 

We want to send teams of young people to all parts of the borough - to North, South, East, West and Central Croydon - to show this town that young people care. That young people want to serve, help and transform the streets, societies and communities in which they live and go to school. To show this town that not all young people can be banded together and called ‘ferrel’.

Show this town that young people can help Be The Change this town badly needs.

How can you help?Partner with us - help to plan, coordinate and run social action projectsSend your young people