Fort Rocky

Fort Rocky is our annual evangelistic youth weekend away for 11-14s and this February we took 43 young people away from 8 churches in and around Cambridge. After a week of torrential rain, the sun came out and we had blue skies and fluffy white clouds for a weekend jam packed full of fun and games, sumptuous food, creativity and talks from some excellent youth communicators. Whether it was whizzing around the Go-Karting track, 2 on 2 Panna cage football, BMX biking, Nerf Gun wars or something calmer like designing and creating custom tote bags or crafting moon rocks in the prayer space there were so many highlights to choose from.

Our theme for the weekend was Fort Rocky: Intergalactic and we used John 1 as a launchpad to explore the vastness of the creator God who flung stars into space before zooming in to see how this God created and knows each one of us. On Saturday night we discovered how the author of creation, the God of time and space wrote himself into the story and came close in the person of Jesus. In response young people had an opportunity to choose to follow Jesus. Three young people stood up in front of a room of their peers and leaders to say they wanted to give their lives to Jesus for the first time ever and then another 15 or so young people chose to recommit to following Jesus.

Please be praying for all the young people who attended Fort Rocky. For those who made a commitment to follow Jesus to grow in their faith and relationship with Him. For those who have not yet made a commitment to know it is never too late and for Jesus to meet them where they are at. For those who had already made a commitment to go deeper on their discipleship journey. For ongoing equipping and wisdom for youth leaders and they continue to journey with the young people.

Open House

Open House is our wellbeing project which seeks to create safe spaces for young people in Cambridge and the surrounding areas promoting positive wellbeing, building healthy relationships and sharing the love of Jesus.

Over the course of summer and autumn 2023 we had some amazing answers to prayer and steps forward for the project. We secured funding for and employed 2 new staff members, Scott (full time) and Rebekah (part time), whose roles are to oversee the project. The building works taking place at No. 40 St Andrews Street were completed and when the contractors moved out, we were able to furnish the space ready for opening. The space at No. 40 is a city centre shop front owned by St Andrews Street Baptist Church, which we have developed into a new youth space and office in collaboration with the church. This is a shared space with multiple users, which also functions as our office base and a central hub for our Open House wellbeing work.

We launched No. 40 youth drop-ins in September and are currently open three nights a week for a couple of hours after school for 11-18s year olds. It’s been an encouraging start to the project seeing over 50 different young people since opening. Two of the young people from St Andrews Street Baptist church have found it a great space to invite their friends from sixth form along and have been attending every week. We have a young person whose mum contacted us through Instagram as he left formal education in the summer and is currently being home schooled. His mum wanted somewhere safe for him to go and spend time with people, and he has been coming regularly since the start of January. A third young person came in for the first time having seen the posters in the windows. She waits around for a bus after college and doesn’t like busy public transport. She comes in a couple of times a week for half an hour or so and we are building good relationship with her.

Alongside this we developed an assembly exploring loneliness and connection as a way of advertising the space which we delivered in one secondary school last term. Over the next couple of weeks, we are taking this assembly into another two schools locally.

We continue to run our mentoring programme in one secondary school and recently conversations have opened up in a new school which is a couple of minutes’ walk from our drop in space. This a school we have approached before and have been praying we might be able to work with. We have had a couple of very encouraging meetings and are working towards launching our mentoring programme soon. Our dream with the mentoring programme is that we would have one staff member delivering the programme alongside three or four volunteers from local churches and so we have been meeting a number of local church leaders and youth workers recently to share the vision and invite them on board.

As ever we hugely value your prayers and know they make a huge difference to our work. Please do be praying for:

Our team as they deliver assemblies.
New volunteers to help serve in No. 40 Drop Ins
The young people who need it most to be able to find and access us and that we are able to build good relationships.
Getting the mentoring programme up and running in this new school. Pray for good conversation and relationships with the staff team.
For good connections with local churches and for 3-4 volunteers to catch the vision and sign up to volunteer as mentors.

I am hugely grateful for the continued support and prayers of all at St Johns.

Cambridge & District Youth For Christ - Mark Watson