About Us
St Albans Diocese is The Church of England in Hertfordshire and Bedfordshire, including Luton and part of the London Borough of Barnet. There are some 330 parishes across the area and a significant number are involved in work with children and young people. Our interest, along with most youth organizations is in people supporting young people aged 11 to 19 years or up to 25 if they have a disability or special need.
Our primary focus is supporting parishes but we also represent the diocese in various youth work forums around the patch, working to ensure that issues of young people and spirituality are kept on the wider agenda.
You will see from the site that we work hard to develop positive partnerships at a number of levels, all with the aim of providing greater opportunities for young people to grow and develop.
An important area for us in the Church of England is getting the voice of young people heard. We therefore work to have representatives on the Church of England Youth Council. This is a body of young people and young adults who work to bring issues of importance to young people into the decision making places of the Church.
One of the key documents that we have produced to ensure that we are working to support parishes effectively is the Youth Service Strategy. This was produced as a result of conversations during 2009 under Let's talk Mission: Let's talk youth and has therefore come out of what parishes have been saying, not just what we think. The document that you can download is only a summary, but do feel free to get in touch for up t date news on progress towards meeting these priorities.
In the Office
Dave Green, the Diocesan Youth Officer. He’s been around a few years but is passionate about wanting young people to come to faith in Christ and grow in that faith. He is also passionate for everyone to understand that young people (and children) are part of the Church NOW, bringing the gifts that they have NOW. The Church of tomorrow will be shaped by what we do now! He gets frustrated by meetings that are just talking, but loves meeting anyone who cares about young people. He never quite fits everything he wants to into the day!
Julie Reeves, the Youth Secretary, is the person who keeps the youth office ticking over, ensuring the website is up to date, mailings done, admin for events and so on. She spends much of her time trying to get Dave organised and in control of his diary, with some but by no means total success! She is the one who answers the phone so knows most things about what is going on – unless Dave comes up with an idea and doesn’t tell anyone!!
It is a busy place where, hopefully, the work is focused on supporting young people and those who work with them.
Please pray for us and the work we are involved in, and if you like what we do, let us know. If you think we could do it better, we’d also like to hear from you.