For such a time as this
It’s been a long journey, but we are totally convinced we have been brought to this point “for such a time as this”. Each year we theme our vision around a Bible passage pressing on our hearts, and as we journeyed through the COVID-19 pandemic with the ongoing years of recovery, we’ve repeatedly been drawn to the ancient story of Queen Esther. Her cousin pleads with her to speak up for the needs of their people, to rescue them from their enemy’s torture – to realise that she has been given this opportunity for such a time as this.
And today we find ourselves with an incredible opportunity to speak up and make a difference for a generation of young people. The impact of the last few years on this generation is difficult to comprehend, but we have found the needs amongst children and young people at the moment greater than ever before. Whilst overall national church attendance might appear grim, the demand for school-based youth work and attendance of our projects has completed boomed. We even made a short documentary about the whole experience and what we’ve learnt from it – that we have been “positioned for such a time as this”. Watch it here:
Our Future?
We are convinced of the desperate need to continue growing and developing our work for years to come. After seeing the value of our work growing so powerfully over the last few years, we embarked upon our most recent season feeling led to reflect on the prophet Isaiah’s bizarre call to the exiled Israelite people to “enlarge the place of your tent, stretch your tent curtains wide, do not hold back; lengthen your cords, strengthen your stakes.”
Within a week we found ourselves thrust into a season like none we’ve ever experienced. In just a few days we had already spoken with over 1000 young people and had meetings with headteachers asking for more and more of us – to the point we had to draw the line: admit we were beyond capacity for our small team of staff and volunteers, and start numerous waiting lists!
It’s clear we need to grow – to work with churches across Southport to collectively “enlarge the place of our tent”, stretching the curtains from beyond our church walls to make our whole community a space for people to find everlasting light and hope.
This is why we are doing all we can to expand our resources and grow our team. But, more than that, we believe we are to find as many ways as possible to enable and equip Christians in Southport to connect and journey with young people in fresh, relevant and exciting ways.
We have been licensed by Youthscape to run their 5-10 week Youthscape Essentials training course as just one tool in our belt and have already completed a fruitful series of sessions, prompting & equipping one particular church to pioneer a new weekly youth night.
There is much opportunity right now – we step forwards in faith and invite you to follow along the journey with us.
enlarge the place of your tent
Isaiah 54:2
How can SASW Trust Projects grow?
A vision like this takes some big steps out in faith and as a charity we are convinced of the need to raise much more funding than ever before to see as much as this vision come to fruition as possible. As we share our call to generously giving in faith, we look forward in hopeful anticipation that we might see more than we ever dreamt of imagined. Take a tour of all our projects (many of which are inundated with booking requests from schools), each with details of current operating costs verses what a vision of growth would look like:
