Back to normal?

One year on from the first UK lockdown in March 2020, life still looks and feels unrecognisable in so many ways from life before Covid-19. Many of us are desperate to say goodbye to the turbulence and the change, and usher in whatever ‘new normal’ is to come our way. Yet in the face of this desire, we remember that this change and turbulence, this stripping back of what we have known and practiced is an incredible opportunity for us to take a moment to carve out and create that new normal for ourselves. We don’t have to sit back passively and watch the ‘new normal’ unfold in our youth ministries, we can play an active part in building a ‘renewed normal’.

Renew Normal is our chance as a youth work community to pause, look back over the last year and think about what we have learned. We want to take time to journey together and reflect on what went well, what we want to leave behind, and what we want to bring forward in our youth ministry as we rebuild a renewed normal. We’ve highlighted four key elements we want to think through as a community:

1. Renew yourself
2. Renew connections
3. Renew discipleship
4. Renew vision

‘Renew Normal’ is a workbook filled with different creative tools, exercises and reflections that will help you to think through each of these key elements. Our hope is that this resource helps you to reflect and to see God’s work in and through you over the last year. That you feel encouraged and inspired to think even bigger, stripping back the limits of what you think possible, dreaming about what your youth ministry could look like going forward, carving out your own renewed normal.