Severnside parishes have thriving youth and families ministries led by Associate Minister for children, youth and families, Libbirty Webber. Their toddler groups ‘Stepping Stones’ and ‘Severnside Youth’ for teenagers are doing especially well, seeing fantastic growth in the last few years.
Through these weekly groups around 45 families with pre-schoolers and around 35 young people are now part of their church family, with many also attending their monthly All-age service.
Libbirty has been instrumental in engaging with families at all three churches in the benefice (St James’ church in Norton, St Mary’s church in Kempsey and St Deny’s church in Severn Stoke) as part of her full-time role. She has been in the post, which is funded by the Healthier Churches fund, since January 2022.
Libbirty said:
“My role is very full-on, but I love it! I feel genuinely called to this and I’m very passionate about journeying through life with the people in our church community. It’s wonderful to witness God at work here.
Libbirty feels called to be both missional and evangelistic, praying for and with her community, sharing Jesus’ teachings and showing God’s love in practical ways. 
She is particularly passionate about youth work, as after her own attendance at church dwindled in her early teens, it was being invited to a church youth group by a friend in her late teens that reignited her faith once more. Feeling a deep sense of purpose from God she became a volunteer youth leader and started a youth group for girls. Keen to learn more she then went onto study Applied Theology at Regents Theological College in Malvern.
She says:
“Our youth group is a mixture of community and church young people. We are committed to creating a safe space that is theirs, a community who listens and somewhere that young people can be themselves.”
“We hold games nights and themed evenings, do scavenger hunts, and cupcake decorating, play pool, table tennis and on the Nintendo switch. This all helps young people to relax, connect and build relationships. We have previously ran a Youth Alpha course with a small group of young people, giving them the opportunity to ask the questions they might not feel they can ask in other spaces in church. We have also seen a number of our young people become more committed to our All-age service and we did a youth ‘take over’ service which also helped with that!”
Libbirty shares that at Stepping Stones, their toddler groups, they always look to link in activities with the wider church calendar and reflect the church festivals through their weekly themes, crafts and stories. Theres also allocated time for free play, singing songs and sharing lunch.
At the start of the autumn term, they ask families, parents and young people what they would like to see included in the groups or what they would like the year ahead to look like. This led to them introducing sensory play into their toddler groups which was well received.
Libbirty said:
“This has helped create spaces that are engaging, relevant and share the needs and interests of our community.”
Libbirty added:
“We are now looking to launch more intentional discipleship programmes with subsets of our weekly groups. Our prayer is that as well as increasing in size, this will increase the depth of discipleship and that more people attending will encounter Jesus and grow in relationship with him.”
