Merry Christmas! Wait… That’s not right.

All youth workers have a quirk, something that they’re known for everywhere they go. For me it’s ‘Summer Christmas Karaoke’. Throughout most of my years as a youth worker, I have run a Christmas party at the end of the summer holidays.

This party includes all of the trimmings; tree, tinsel, mince pies, fairy lights, and Christmas songs. It’s fun, it’s festive, and it’s wonderfully ironic with the sun beating down hard outside.

So I imagine the question you’re all asking is ‘why?’ (Or perhaps more honestly you’re asking ‘what’s wrong with you, Tim?’) The answer of course, is ‘why not?’

At Christmas we focus on certain aspects of who Jesus is more than any other time of year. We think about Him being Emmanuel – God with us. We talk about his humility, His ultimate innocence, and the fact that He was born to save us. At Christmas we also celebrate community, drawing together around meals, fireplaces, and highly competitive games of Monopoly.

Tell me that Christmas doesn’t represent what we should be celebrating every single day? That’s a community of people gathered closely together around the person of Jesus.

Those two pillars might represent better than anything else what we build our work on at Llandudno Youth for Christ. That’s a genuine community, and a focus on Jesus. After all, we’re about seeing young people changed by Jesus!

Last night we had to cancel our Redefine online gathering because the technology failed us. The program Zoom had gone down pretty much worldwide, partially because of the amount of churches who all tried to meet at the same time. It’s good to think that church broke the Internet!

For us though it was gutting.

Whether it’s online or in person the Youth for Christ community love to gather together. The team and the young people have formed a genuine community that serve and support each other – and every time we gather we point to Jesus.

Over the last two years we’ve had some visits from national teams, speakers, and youth workers. Every single one of them have told us the same thing – they are blown away by how much everyone in our groups genuinely want to be there. That’s the gravity of our projects, a community of people who genuinely want to connect. I strongly believe that the glue for this is Jesus – God with us.

It’s interesting that some people think that you can’t teach young people about Jesus in youth groups, or that you’ve got to keep the ‘God slot’ really short and simple and just talk about teenage experiences with a bit of a God-bent on them. That’s just not been our experience. For us if you take the focus on Jesus away then the community doesn’t work anymore. Jesus is the heartbeat of the Youth for Christ community and we genuinely believe that He is the reason why what we do works.

So please keep standing with us, keep praying for us, keep supporting us financially so the focus can be where it needs to be, and do consider prayerfully whether God is calling you to be part of this community. If you love young people, love Jesus, and can leave your ego at the door to help everyone in the room connect, then maybe this is for you. Fill in the form below and let us know.