Not a phrase you’ll find in Scripture, but one I use often in training courses.
I’ve recently attended an excellent Bible by the Beach in Eastbourne and heard Bishop Wallace Benn quote from Acts. ‘Then Peter stood with the 11, raised his voice and addressed the crowd’ (Acts 2.14). It seems that Peter did not stand alone, but the rest of the disciples stood with him lending support and encouragement. They were ‘supporting the man with the ball’. Football may not appeal to everyone, but the simple principle is that, if you have the ball, you need to know that you have passing options to other team members — you are not isolated.
Isolated youth teams
Increasingly, in training and mentoring situations, I am finding that youth teams feel isolated and unsupported. They are appointed and maybe even publically acknowledged, but very soon the assumption is made that these people will turn up each week, do the job, and keep the children out of the way of ‘real’ church. It is rarely deliberately neglectful. If you have a full-time youth minister you seriously need to look at the way the church handles their support. At the very least they need a group with whom they can pray. Sometimes youth ministers have networks where they meet staff from other churches doing the same job, but they are not that common.
