That said, “It’s in need of some serious love,” says Lyndsay Smith, the 34-year-old director of Youth for Christ Chislehurst who moved onto the Edgebury estate from Reading two years ago.
Having no centre to work from, she set about networking with local churches and, with their help, broke the ice with the Edgebury youth through small scale outreaches. It’s the opening of a new youth club in the last few months, however, that has seen real victories won with the estate’s young people.
“Even though I’d done work with these guys before, the main bulk of stuff has happened since we opened,” says Lyndsay, who had to fight off stiff opposition from adults on the estate worried that the centre would become a magnet for badly behaved youths.
“We don’t run services here yet because the kids just can’t make that shift yet, but we’ve been able to introduce the God element to them. Bible studies have started up and we’ve taken them to Kensington Temple to give them an experience of church and desensitise them to church,” she continued.
In the three months since it opened, The Edge has become the regular hangout for a group of around 30 boys between the ages of 12 and 18. An after-school club is also doing well in attracting many of the estate’s primary school aged children. The few older girls who do come along seem for the time being to be more interested in the boys than the Bible, although Lyndsay hopes that will one day change.
“Young people need a safe place where they can be loved for who they are. A lot of the young people around here are not looked upon fondly and I think we generally stigmatise and vilify our young people,” she believes.
None of the youths have had any real experience of Christianity, and with more than a third of them excluded from school and around 80 per cent of them at risk of offending or involved in the criminal justice system already, Lyndsay and her two volunteer staff have had to modify their approach to sharing the Gospel.“We tried a bit of Youth Alpha with them and we had to adapt that heavily because it is designed for more middle class children who are used to sitting down and listening, children who are ready to engage. Our kids just aren’t there yet,” she explains.
