Last week at Inhabit Conference I was asked to do a six minute talk inhabit handout of 20 slides with just 20 seconds per slide. I was tasked with trying to convey the StreetSpace story in the local setting. I have not blogged consistently for quite a while, So I thought I would try and discipline myself to posting a little something on each slide over the next few weeks.

The first slide was the formula – (People+Place) x Relationship = Space

The previous evening the fabulous Alan Roxburgh had spoken, on God being found in the local and much of the missio dei missiology. This was great stuff to be reminded of, but in the UK and particularly the UK youth mission context seemed pretty dated. Like many others I had been doing had been working in that sort of way for over 20 years and certainly it was embedded into our practice by the time I first wrote Meet Them Where They’re at 15 years ago. StreetSpace had been pushing the thinking for the last 8 or so years, whilst our practice in the liminal (land of dragons) space has driven our thinking far beyond these early conversations, and I hoped the slides would convey something of this.

In the first slide I wanted the formula to convey the connection between presence and place, but more than this, to give weight to the importance of relationships in the process. For me it is important to create the space for the young people to flourish and become fully human. Creating Space is an interplay of people, place and relationship. A place is somewhere you arrive, a space is somewhere to explore and grow. I used the retort We call the Walls to Dust (hat tip to Gavin Mart and Martin Dawes) as so often what we do is about removing the practical and conceptual barriers that get in the way of this flourishing. It is also why (I think) our practice seems innovative and edgy to many. As a path finder project of FYT, StreetSpace is not just exploring the How to do you DO mission differently but also the why. We are experimenting with new models both conceptually and practically of church and mission that build the kingdom and help life flourish, and the interplay of relationship is critical to this.

Lori wrote a poem to Mr Newmark and I prepared a pompom to represent the 8000 plus marginalised young people Streetspace work with every week. The poem is called Knitter Natter and also explains why charities need to be political…

Click Clack like the words politicians throw out.
A scarf of sincerity to muffle our shouts.
The embroidered homilies you wish we’d embrace,
will not give much justice to those you’ve misplaced.
We stand with the wordless,
those who’ve just lost the thread,
because no one is listening to the words being said.
We patchwork the broken,
yes we give a darn,
so please Mr Newmark
won’t you pass me the yarn.

I have been thinking a lot about the difference between developing a symbiotic approach to spirituality with young people over an appropriation approach where the emerging spirituality of YP is taken by youth workers and without real dialogue appropriated into a christian paradigm. A bit like how everyday objects (Urinals or Beds) can be used as art when taken out of their usual context and put in a gallery.

Young people are in a constant state of paradox that is all about the discovering their identity, they are making choices, deciding who they are, imprinting and removing imprints all the time. So when we try to appropriate the spirituality we see out on the streets from young people, these young people will just see it as part of their identity formation (everyday life) which I think ties into Mayo, Collins and Nash’s Happy midi narrative. Further more as they are in the midst of identity forming that when we appropriate we are seen as “other” and perhaps part of the adult world being rejected in the turmoil of the moment. So the spirituality may be written off, or the effects of globalistion kick in and so young people see spirituality as something unobtainable. BUT in the context of relational youth work symbiotic approaches mean we change as we encounter their spirituality which fosters the space for identity construction and part of the identity search is thier search for uniqueness, which may kick in and create the conditions to mutually foster the emergent spirituality.

It is stories that count but at StreetSpace we have just been completed our annual impact study and so maybe have another read of the post below and try to imagine those stories duplicated across the whole country, when you take a look at THIS

There is some crazy stuff bubbling up on the ground with young people across the country that are in touch with StreetSpace work. Our context is very much a praxis approach to youth work, where we carry and work out of a values systems (professional youth work and a kingdom shalom wholeness ethic) but do not talk explicitly about these values. We want to embrace and hear the values the young people bring, so together we can find a new way of being. For more on Symbiotic youth work check out Here be Dragons.

So I know the stories below (and the others like them that spring up) are not forced, but self determined by the young people themselves.

“Don’t tell anyone, but we started meeting up to tell God about all the stuff that stresses us out – it might sounds weird, but it totally makes us feel better afterwards” Turns out they had been recommended to pray about their troubles by another friend who “is really naughty and used to smoke weed until two weeks ago”. Yet another friend, a few weeks ago, went round telling her friends that she’d started praying and didn’t want to cut herself so much now and they should try praying too.

( from a recent drugs work project happening locally) One YP said “do you think it is ok to sign my name the rollerblader of faith ….” Then he looks on iPad for a Jesus outfit to come to the sk8 jam as Jesus ,,, J then says “did Jesus have a brother I could come as his brother …”

Three tweets on praxis.
When we engage in genuine (values informed) praxis a web of relationships evolves around us where yP appropriate with us the kingdom.
This is what, I think, is going on in the StreetSpace community on the ground, young people appropriate the parts that connect with their real lived experiences, and try to make sense of that in the every day.

Missional praxis engenders a community that facilitates dissent but still embraces the dissenter as a co-conspirator towards wholeness
I am not sure why he wants to dress up as jesus, in part it is identification, in part for a laugh, but it is dissent, both from his peers, and tradition. The good part is that the web of relationships around him will be fine with it and if not we will work that out as we go, and all move towards wholeness.

As a group tell their story they learn & engage from the web of beliefs around them, mission strategies hinder this but mission praxis doesn’t.

There is something in the telling of the story (you started praying or calling yourself blader of faith) that enables and frees people to engage and make sense of the web of beliefs emerging around them. If we have fixed strategies I am not sure they would happen in the same way and if our ideas or strategies about where this goes next are fixed, we will break the fragile strands of the web evolving.

If fancy supporting our work on the ground you can give online

Okay so a long title but I have long been trying to outwork some of Friere’s philosophy around liberation since the early 1990s, and was thinking about this after last nights detached session. Particularly I was reflecting on this as the primary issues concerned a small group of young women we engaged as two male detached youthworkers. My twitter feed then came up with a great set of notes on Pedagogy of the Oppressed by God Loves Women. If you have never read Friere or read it and got stuck go read her notes HERE

For most of the session last night liberation was running through my mind as we encountered the group. Two young women started chatting with us about some of the issues they were facing, and you could tell from the off it would be one of those conversations that deepened quickly. We move from hello, to engaging issues of relationships and drug use within five minutes (we previously had worked with the group). They raised issues of isolation, hope, and powerlessness, as we talked around these issues. Desperate for a lighter, one girl, let’s call her Charlie shouted across to her friend, “got a lighter?” The negative response proved a response of “slag” from Charlie and although jokey in manner, I challenged this with “where’s the sisterhood? just cos she doesn’t have a lighter, you call her names” We explored this for a while, before being invited by the now larger group to sit with them.

My first reflection is ‘Can I as a man dialogue with these young women towards sisterhood?’ and this is a critical question because of how the conversation later develops. I am aware of my Conscientization role, but as the evening moves we have clearly created a good dialogue space and begin to hit about 50% of the points for the correct method of addressing oppression that lies in dialogue that God Loves Woman identifies from Friere.

The conversation continues around being made to go places by parents, threats, and a long conversation around stop and search, both in school and out of school. I do some problem posing with them, and move between concrete to abstract ideas, building in some organising and empowerment stuff. For example we discussed the issue of their feelings of victimization by a teacher as they were being regularly searched. We discussed their rights, responsibilities, and conditions under which searching may be appropriate and strategies by which the process could be challenged. My second reflection is all about the power, the positional power of the teacher, the powerless of the student and the lack of sisterhood that makes consolidating the power the young women have as a group problematic, as well as my own power in the conversation and process.

One of the solutions hypothesised was to identify the ten most regularly searched women and agree to challenge the system through direct action. The young women stated they often refused searches by teachers but are met with the response that the police will be called to do the search. We discussed community organising, principles of deliberately ensuring they had no contraband, warning teachers that if they called the police they would be wasting police time. We problematised this as a possible solution, and came full circle to the lack of sisterhood, and the question ‘why call her a slag?’ and what is your role in liberating yourself from this. I am pretty aware of the ethical and legal issues of this discussion, but the feeling of oppression, powerlessness and lack of hope in these young women was palpable. So my final reflection is a mixture of the first two, what is my role as a male in this context, my rights to speak, the value of anything I say? and what can be done towards liberation with these young women, as we are way beyond the make over pampering sessions to build esteem?

If interested in more conversation check out www.fyt.org.uk who are hosting a day with Worth Unlimited on work with young women on May 8th in Manchester.

My role involves speaking to a myriad of youth workers, church leaders and young people and a consistent theme of the conversations I have recently (at least 15 that spring to mind) are of young people being committed to faith, exploration but struggling with the church of England’s response to sexuality and in particular their treatment of people in loving, committed same sex relationships. So I was hopeful when I saw the arch bishop noting a rejection of same sex blessings will be seen by many as akin to racism
I was then disappointed to see the church of England’s pastoral announcement from the house of bishops on Valentines day
“The House is not, therefore, willing for those who are in a same sex marriage to be ordained to any of the three orders of ministry. In addition it considers that it would not be appropriate conduct for someone in holy orders to enter into a same sex marriage, given the need for clergy to model the Church’s teaching in their lives.”

When I read the AbC I thought at last a leader with his ear to the ground, maybe he had heard the stories I had, like three young people refusing at the last minute to be confirmed as they would not aline themselves with an oppressive regime of the church, or the whole youth group who rejoiced over the women bishops but mourned over the coming death of the church that they saw coming due to its treatment of LGBT people.

Then there’s the committed core of a young outreach project wanting to get political at a major Christian youth festivals that they feel give one sided teaching on LGBT issues that excludes and hurts their friends, Christ and the church. These are some of the stories from within the Church of England regime, and that’s without the tens of thousands of young people for whom this simply continues to reinforce that the church is judgemental, unloving, critical and irrelevant. That is why I have used the word regime with all the negative connotations this word brings, because that is what issued the supposed pastoral statement a regime devoid of grace not the church, the bride of Christ full of love entering into relationship with the world and one another.