Dear Sir,
I would like to thank Roger Carswell for his article on Youth Work (January en) and would fully endorse the many points he raised about the decline of youth work. I would agree that the lack of influence of the many youth ministries has contributed to this, as church-based activities, though good in themselves, do not reach the unchurched young generation.
For 25 years the Covenanter movement, to which my own church in North London was affiliated in the 1950s, contributed many attractive extra activities as well as our church providing good Bible teaching for teenage boys – the three-hour Club Night, annual camps, Holiday Clubs and sports competitions of all kinds. I was blessed when teaching PE and RE at a local Comprehensive boys’ school that so many of the boys there joined Covenanters. Of course this work has always demanded a huge amount of time from ‘volunteer’ youth workers.
