Young Leaders’ Community Registration and Consent Form

Membership is free, and available to 10-18 year old Christians from within Sheffield Diocese (largely South Yorkshire) irrespective of denomination. Young people from non-Anglican churches will be encouraged to grow in opportunities made available within their own denomination and may also engage in Anglican opportunities if leaders and parents permit.

The Young Leaders’ Community is an inclusive space for young people from all Christian traditions to listen and learn from each other, and to demonstrate Christian unity across our different beliefs and traditions. Our values of love, patience, understanding and an openness to learn will guide us to growing together despite difference.

Members of the YLC across the diocese will meet together occasionally (for training, discipleship, planning and friendship) in different places and online.

Members of the YLC will be encouraged by local leaders of the church to take on leadership opportunities in their local church. This could include:

• speaking, reading, welcoming, praying and leading etc. in services
• involvement in decision-making processes in the church and
• initiating new mission and ministry activity with proper support, training and resources.

From the age of 16, young people can join the electoral roll and be voted on to the PCC to influence, shape and contribute to the mission and ministry of the church. Children and young people can be invited to attend church leadership meetings to be heard and valued for their contributions. Likewise, church leaders should seek out the voices of the children by creating opportunities where they can attend the children’s or youth group and hear their thoughts and ideas. Care should be taken that this ‘listening’ is not tokenistic or hollow, but leads to real change in the church.

Members of the YLC will have diocesan opportunities made available by central diocesan staff, for example, leading at Breathe Deep (our annual youth event), shaping training that clergy receive, producing media, leading workshops at Development Day, working with the Diocesan Advisers on key areas (disability, racial justice, LGBTQI+) and working with our Bishops and senior staff on strategy, vision and funding decisions. The YLC will help to change the culture of the diocese by putting children and young people at the heart of all our mission and ministry. The members will also be encouraged to create new initiatives which they take a lead in, supported and resourced by diocesan central staff with appropriate safeguarding and risk management in place.

More information about the Young Leaders’ Community is available at: www.sheffdio.org/ylc

Communication with young people will be done using the Spond app. All young people will have a youth leader connected to them on the app, enabling the youth leader to see all the comments they make. It is not possible for children under 18 to send or receive private or direct messages for safeguarding purposes. For children aged between 10-12, a parent or carer must also be connected to the child in the app to provide an extra level of appropriate safeguarding. The parent or carer will be able to see any comments their child makes in the app, but is encouraged not to join in the conversation, but to alert Rachel Baker (rachel.baker@sheffield.anglican.org) and/or Mike North (mike.north@sheffield.anglican.org) if there are any concerns. They act as administrators and safeguarding representatives for the YLC app.

Communicating through Spond is safer and more compliant with our safeguarding policies than using email or text messages, which is why we have chosen to use it to communicate with the YLC. If, for whatever reason, you don’t wish to use the Spond app on a mobile phone, it can be used on a web browser, and notifications can be set up to be received via email.