Children and young people want to be supported to live out their faith and grow in their discipleship every day of the year. 3Generate the event is an important part of this journey, but it goes much wider. For children and young people to flourish they need to be completely embedded and fully participating in local Christian community, as part of the Body of Christ. This should be a community where all ages together pray, listen, notice, discuss and explore what God is calling them to, and commit to be active as disciples in the world.
This page is designed to help children and young people, with the help of their leaders, to continue exploring what it means to be a disciple - to tune in to God, the world and each other, to discern what God might be saying and to work out what this means with regards to the next steps on their faith journey.
A Methodist Way of Life as a useful tool
In the Methodist Church, there are 12 practices that we think particularly help us to encounter God. We call this A Methodist Way of Life. Each practice is a station on the journey where we meet God and grow in faith.
You might find it helpful to explore a Methodist Way of Life together as a group.
- Which practices help different members to tune in to God, the world and each other?
- Which practices do different members of the group think they should try to do more of?
- Which practices do some people find more difficult, uncomfortable or challenging?
- Which practices might help your group to discern what God is saying?
- Which practices might help your group to respond and take action to what God is saying?
All We Can, the Methodist relief and development charity who are a key part of the 3Generate event, has produced this brilliant MWOL Hub resource, to help you and your group explore the different practices together regularly.
Tune in to God
- Getting started with praying to listen is a session plan for you to use with your groups, encouraging children and young people encouraging a focus of prayer that moves away from confession and intercession and into prophetic spaces.
- Prayer Spaces in Schools offers loads of creative prayer activities. For those that particularly encourage listening to God, try these activities focused on being still and quiet.
- Engage Worship is another website packed with some great ideas. Pause/Pray is a collection of audio Bible reflections, featuring original music, guided prayers, and themes related to Bible passages and daily life. The worship resources on offer also feature a huge number of creative prayer ideas.
- 24-7 Prayer International has a number of resources you may want to use with, or recommend to, your children and young people. These include the Lectio 365 app, which is a daily devotional resource that helps people to pray through the Bible, and the 'Help me pray' section, which contains lots of ways in which prayer can be built into daily life.
Tune in to the world and each other
The In it together session explores the local church as a community; its role in witnessing to and transforming wider communities; and the duties and responsibilities we each have to the communities we belong to. This is a flexible session plan, with three parts, each with a choice of activities, that can be delivered over a number of weeks, taking a different option each week, or could be done in a shorter amount of time. It is up to you to decide what would suit your group best.
If you would like to spend more time as a group, thinking about how we are all part of the Body of Christ and the Methodist Church family, then you could download this resource on Responding to Our Calling.
Also available is a Bible study on being part of God's global family. This can be used by individuals or worked through as part of a small group or youth group setting.
What is God saying?
Download and use this session plan on Hearing God's call.
- For ideas on how to introduce talk of calling and vocation more regularly within your group, perhaps consider using some of these conversation starters.
- The Church of England offers several short Bible studies, with accompanying prayers, on its Stories of Calling web page. Also from the Church of England, and for those who want to go deeper, download the sample pages of Life is for giving, a book of devotions that was created for Vocations Sunday, with suggestions for reflection and action.
- And from the Diocese of Llandaff comes a session plan to help explore vocation and calling with children.
- On the resources page of the Student Christian Movement you can search for vocations resources, including its Called to be vocations resource.
- Prospects offers an online career planner quiz for prospective students, helping them to match their skills, motivations and desires to potential career choices.
- Similar to the above is the Buzz Quiz from UCAS, helping young people to discover what their strengths and motivations are, what jobs they might enjoy and what celebrities they are similar too.
- You can also watch the following video together, which was originally created for a Breakout event but is still relevant today:
What next? Responding and taking action!
We want to encourage children and young people to start thinking about what God might calling them to do and then take action, either on their own, with friends or as a whole group. This can take a variety of forms, be big or small and be starting something new or joining in with something already happening. Where do they see God already at work, and how can they be a part of that? This is about children and young people working towards change in ways that are meaningful and relevant to them.
For help exploring this with children and young people, have a look at the session plans in Appendix 3 of Voice Activated.
We've also created this short, conversational session plan: Respond and take action.
Here are some activism packs and resources to help take action:
- UNICEF Youth Advocacy Toolkit for any young person who wants to start their own advocacy campaign.
- Although sadly now closed, the legacy website from Campaign Bootcamp has loads of great resources to support campaigning
- Christian Aid's campaigns toolkit includes advice on campaigning with craftivism and how to get more people involved
- Lift the ban activism pack with ideas to campaign for refugees' right to work.
- These walls must fall activism pack from Global Justice Now, asking for an end to detention centres.
- Current campaigns from Refugee Action.
As part of this, you might also want to explore together what it means enter into a covenant relationship with God. To help with this, a session plan Exploring covenant and the Methodist Covenant Prayer has been created for you to use with your group.
What do you want to say to each other?
We've adapted the handout you were given during Group Time at 3Generate so that you can ue it as a resource to carry on the conversations all year-round. Download the Keep tuning in sheet here.
What do you want to say to your church?
You might want to work with your parents/carers, group leaders, church stewards and church council to agree how children and young people will be involved in your church's mission development, based on their conversations about tuning in to God, the world and each other and their ideas for responding and taking action.
We've also created a blank poster, which can be used by anyone - whether they attended 3Generate or not - to share what God is saying to your group as you tune in beyond 3Generate. Download that poster here.
We'd love to see and share some finished posters from different groups. If you'd be willing to have them featured on the website, please email them to us!
What do you want to say to the Methodist Church in Britain?
The Methodist Youth President and Youth Reps are there to listen to what children and young people, from across the connexion, have to say and to advocate on their behalf to the wider Methodist Church.
- Find out more about the work of the Youth President here
- Contact your Youth President
- Follow the Youth President on Instagram
- Find out more about the work of the Youth Reps here
- Follow the Youth Reps on Instagram
Your group might like to understand more about how the Methodist Church in Great Britain is structured. This page might be a helpful starting point.