THE OUTBACK

Each Friday from 6pm-8pm my awesome Outback team open up our building to local teens ranging in age from 11-17.

Our aim is to get along side these kids each week providing a balance to worldly influences and showing them Jesus purely by the way we act towards them and connect with them.

We have a lot of fun playing pool, football, badminton, trying different crafts and listening to music , we also provide free hotdogs and hot drinks and open up the tuck shop so they can buy sweets and soft drinks

In 2014 Our Church was given a prophesy saying that we needed to expect new people to be coming into our church these people would be different to what we were used to, they wouldn’t look like us or speak like us . The Children that I see on a Friday are different to the kids that come to CLC on a Sunday , they are not brought up in the way that we as Christians try to raise our kids, they sometimes have a completely different set of morals and behaviours and because of this we, as helpers, often face difficult and challenging situations with them. However here is a group of people who really need us. Jesus himself often spent time with people who were challenging and in Luke 5 v 31 he said ” the well don’t need a physician.”

Having had a difficult time myself as a teenager resulting in being badly hurt and my family being put through some awful situations I can honestly say I wish that there had been somewhere for me to go , someone who I could have spoken to, someone I could have connected with to show me a different way.  Because of my experiences I have such a passion for these kids , to enable them to discover a new way, to see them develop ambition and drive and to turn their lives around . Quite a few of our kids are already in specialist schools where they only attend a few hours a week as they can’t cope with mainstream education for one reason or another. We see kids with , among other things, eating disorders , anger management issues and low self esteem, most are from broken families .

William Ross Wallace said in his poem that ” The hand that rocks the cradle rules the world ” here is a chance to be a Godly influence on this next generation and I’m so proud to be a part of that !

We are always happy to welcome new helpers onto our team. Although we can see that it isn’t for everyone , we would love to have you try out as helpers to see if, in fact, it is your calling . Come and join Team Awesome !!

Hannah Innes