Hello everyone! As Youth Moderator and Youth Moderator Elect, Alex and I are thrilled to launch this brand-new blog. Each month, we want to take you along on our journey – sharing our day-to-day work, reflecting on events and, above all, celebrating the incredible things young people are doing right across the United Reformed Church.
To kick things off, I recently spent two days with the Woking URC Youth Camp, and the experience was amazing. When I asked them what mattered most about Woking, every single person gave the same answer: the strong sense of community, genuine welcome, and safety.
At its best, church is defined by how safe, accepted, and valued people feel when they gather together. The Woking camp was a wonderful picture of true Christian fellowship – a place where people hold each other up and share their lives.
Our prayer is that this blog becomes an extension of that same spirit across the wider URC. We want this to be more than a place where we share scheduled updates; we want a space where we share our hope, encourage one another, and highlight the love and good deeds happening across URC Youth and beyond.
Hebrews 10: 23–25 sums up what I saw at camp and what Alex and I hope to build here.
– Kacie
Hi all!
The last month since General Assembly has been a busy one for me. The response to, and engagement with, Kacie and my “Mods on Tour” project has been fantastic. Because of this, I have bounced around East Midlands Synod a bit this month, visiting Bulwell with the East Midlands CYDO Richard, and Gainsborough with the Synod team: the support for the project from the Synod has been a source of huge encouragement for me.
Kacie and I are committed to reaching churches that are very distant from Church House or Synod offices. So, I was up in Glasgow for a weekend to visit Rutherglen URC and to attend an ecumenical service of prayer at St Andrew’s Roman Catholic Cathedral. The welcome from Rutherglen and the cathedral was more than I could have expected, and more generally the welcome I have felt from the Church in the role of Moderator Elect has been overwhelming.
Finally, at the end of July, I was invited to a Churches Together in England reception in London, hosted by the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of Thyateira and Great Britain. The Archdiocesan Chapel (pictured above) was beautiful, and the enthusiasm for ecumenism among young leaders across the denominations was obvious. This is something I look forward to exploring further with the contacts I made at the event.
– Alex
Main image: Mike Bird | Pexels