Scripture Union

And it was wonderful, really good.

An organization called Scripture Union was leading it.

And they were having a camp, an Easter camp.

Our school year in the Southern Hemisphere starts in January.

Yeah.

Now when I got born again and I came to Scripture Union and we went to meeting, the first thing I noticed was that the people were speaking.

Yeah.

Like when they say let us pray, they speak about us or they s- they, they...

Do you want any more?

Hello and welcome to the Mission Sparks podcast from Scripture Union, helping you to reveal Jesus to the next generation.

My name is Jenny and joining with me in our virtual studio today is Matt.

Matt, how are you?

Tell us,

Ruth, what do you currently do for a job?

I work for Scripture Union and I am the sport and faith hub coordinator.

But basically, I have produced a load of resources for the sports ministry.

Beautiful.

Scripture Union have also been exploring some fascinating research into the outsized role that grandparents can play in the faith of young people.

So we'll be asking today, have we been overlooking faithful grandparents at our peril? What difference does it make when a young person has a grandparent who follows Jesus? And what can this research tell us about the role grandparents can play? in youth ministry and of course the team we are fully loaded and ready for some riotous organized and transferable fun how's your days been so far you guys before we get into the fun martin we're going to ask you questions about satellites but you've had a day of it already haven't you

I've been well, I should be able to do the satellites debrief because we've had the whole satellites team together in one place.

How are we getting on with our parents? Maybe you're the parent and the youth worker.

Maybe you're thinking about that.

But what if grandparents are one of the most powerful, sometimes overlooked people in young people's faith journey? So in addition to Barna research, looking at the impact of parental faith on children, Scripture Union have highlighted some fascinating research suggesting that the warmth between a grandparent and grandchild can be incredibly significant in whether faith gets passed from one generation to the next.

So we're going to spend a little bit of time discussing this research and how we can potentially implement it into our youth ministry.

The fifth class teacher, he wasn't my teacher, there was two fifth class teachers.

He was the second in charge of the, it was called an adjutant, which is a military term really, but he was second in charge of the junior boys camp that was run by Scripture Union that was held at the Grange at Mount Victoria.

A lot of people might have been there even as kids.

Yeah, yeah.

He said to me, I can remember the cheque for your camp fees came from a bank in Epping.

Now we had no relations in Epping so I think somebody somewhere It's paid, and I get emotional about this, they paid a cheque for anybody to go to camp and God was able to use that for me.

Isn't that amazing? And I've been able to do that since with scripture unions, not all the time but some camps, you know.

Yeah.

[ on-hold music] Hello, and welcome to another interview with the Leaders of Worship and Preacher's Trust and Preach Magazine.

We are delighted to be joined today by Mark Griffiths, who is the Director of Mission Resources at Scripture Union.

Thank you, Mark, for joining us today.

You're welcome.

Lovely to be here.

Today's conversation really has a chance to get to know Scripture Union a bit, um, a bit deeper, in more detail, and it's a great time that we can really listen to what you've been up to, um, what the future holds for Scripture Union.

Your...

The history of Scripture Union is just incredible, over 150 years, and it's just a blessing to have you on today.

We've got a bit of an old bio.

We were laughing earlier on 'cause we've got a Scripture Union 2023 article as a bio, which is fascinating.

But Christians in sport and all that sort of stuff, love that.

So just, but just give us a little bit of your background before we get to later stuff that you've done.

Just give us a flavor of what happened.

Yeah, that was amazing actually.

That was, yeah, with Scripture Union, just an amazing opportunity.

Yeah, sport was not the most natural thing, particularly I was trying to reach young people and particularly girls and, yeah, it was really interesting.