8 January 2025

Podcast: Sharing the gospel in schools with Wayne Harris from Crossteach

This article is part of the Affinity Talks Gospel Podcast series.

https://open.spotify.com/show/6I7sdnKXyhlP8gYM5hfOzF?si=0e1fe51594e04d9f

In this episode of the Affinity Talks Gospel Podcast, Graham Nicholls is joined by Wayne Harris from Crossteach to explore the vital work of Christian outreach in schools.

Wayne shares his personal journey to faith during his school years and how it shaped his passion for youth ministry. Together, they discuss the privilege of engaging with students about Christianity in a school setting, the importance of partnerships with churches, and the barriers faced in this ministry, including resource limitations and cultural challenges. Listen in to learn why schools are a critical space for gospel work, how Crossteach equips local churches for this mission, and the value of presenting Christianity as a faith that is both true and good.

Crossteach is an educational charity which has been teaching about the Christian faith in schools since 2001. You can find our more about Crossteach on their website: www.crossteach.com

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Topics addressed in this Podcast:

  • Key areas of schools ministry – Highlighting Crossteach’s work in delivering RE lessons, running inclusive lunchtime and after-school clubs, and hosting interactive events like Christmas and Easter experiences.
  • Challenges in schools ministry and cultural dynamics in schools – Exploring how the cultural landscape has shifted, with a growing minority of students expressing hostility towards Christian values, particularly around relationships and sexuality.
  • The strategic value of schools work – Recognising schools as a modern-day marketplace where young people form ideas and relationships, making them a critical space for gospel outreach, as most faith decisions are made before age 18.
  • Encouragement for churches to engage with local schools – Emphasising how partnerships with organisations like Crossteach can enhance schools ministry through resources, training, and support, while highlighting the strategic importance of schools in gospel outreach.

Transcript

[AI generated]

[0:11] Welcome to another episode of Affinity Talks Gospel Podcast.

[0:16] My name is Graham Nicholls and I’m pleased to welcome today Wayne Harris from Crossteach. Welcome, Wayne.

Hi, Graham. Great to be with you.

Tell us a little bit about yourself personally, kind of where you are geographically. You don’t have to give us our street address, but the town and how you came to be doing what you’re doing before we ask you about Crossteach specifically.

[0:37] Yep, okay so a bit about me personally. I live in Kenilworth in the West Midlands. Here with my wife, and father of two children, both adults now – one at university, one living at home working. And we’re members of Kenilworth Community Church. Yeah, so I’ve been in Kenilworth for around about 15 years. So we moved up to this area when I joined Crossteach.

Were you from a Christian home?

Originally, me, no not from a Christian family and it – I suppose it’s one of those things. I’m not a psychologist – do some pop psychology! But I became a Christian through the witness of school friends so maybe that that informs part of why I feel schoolswork is such a vital work.

So did you become a Christian actually at school age then, as it were?

Yeah, during during sixth form year, less than a year before I left, so went off to university as a very new christian. But yeah just during my final time at school, yeah.

Right. That’s just real – it’s a really good thing to hear. So you work for an organisation called Crossteach. Before you did that you were you a teacher?

Originally, I trained as a secondary math teacher. I did five years, loved working with the young people and that side of teaching. Not so much some of the other aspects of teaching. So then did a – oh how long was it,

[2:07] probably about 10 years of various roles within the IT and internet world including running my own business, running another startup business.

[2:20] But at the same time, within church, still doing voluntary youth work.

Right.

And just reaching a point of, actually, my heart is in working with young people.

[2:29] So working through that process, seeing – not having any theological training or youth work training, seeing the Crossteach post and being a qualified teacher seemed like a really good fit. And couldn’t have been far wrong. 15 years later I’m still here, so it probably was a good fit yeah.

Yeah, brilliant. So introduce us to Crossteach – what do you do?

It’s very simple – we are Christian schoolswork. So we go in schools and teach about the Christian faith. And this is one thing I’m not sure everyone – when you’re in something, you don’t always realise how it compares to other things – so in the UK, we are very privileged I think as Christians to have opportunities to be in schools. Schools have to teach about Christianity. They should be having daily acts of worship that are broadly of a Christian nature. So there are plenty of opportunities for Christians to be in schools and that’s where we are, trying to make the most of those opportunities.

Yeah, just on the act of worship – just as a slight sidebar, I was interviewed about this recently on the radio because there were some moves afoot to to get rid of it basically. My anecdotal evidence is that it’s not really practised

[3:48] in the way that it should be, but it is still on the statute book as it were. Is that right?

That would be our – yeah, that would be our experience particularly in secondary schools. A number of primary schools I think still practise them, particularly obviously church schools, even church secondary schools. But I would say secondary schools, it’s very rare to find something that would resemble some kind of act – what we might call an act of worship. They might still have assemblies where notices are given and they’re told off for messing around on the bus – that kind of thing – but…

Is that supposed to be every day?

They should still be every day – not necessarily the whole school together every day, so some schools may do something within a tutor time, a registration period, where there might be a thought for the day, that kind of thing.

Right.

Yeah, so they vary in how they look but it should be something every day.

Yeah, well yeah – and I’m pretty sure it’s not practised. So why is an organisation like yours needed? Why can’t churches just do that or why aren’t churches just doing that? Because it seems like an obvious thing for churches to be doing if there are those kind of opportunities.

And lots of churches are doing that, which is great. I think some some of it is about, obviously, capacity. We have some – we have, in the four areas where we work,

[5:11] roughly the equivalent to full-time people, sometimes it’s a mix of part-time, but roughly the equivalent to full-time people who are dedicated to this. Not many churches have that capacity, but also it’s then within a shared resource for all the churches in a local area. So rather than each church having to find somebody within their congregation, we provide those specialist skills to a group of churches in a local area. And our experience is, in reality, lots of churches have relationships with primary schools. and they feel very comfortable doing that. They seem to feel less comfortable with secondary schools. And obviously something like an RE lesson, if you’re teaching at GCSE, an A-level standard, there is a bit more rigour in the curriculum and what you’re expected to teach. So having qualified teachers, we think, adds something churches may not have within their congregations.

Yeah, that’s really helpful. It’s a specialism. So it’s not so much that churches aren’t necessarily doing it, but they may not have the skill set or the confidence.

[6:13] And you may, I suppose, in some cases be a pump primer, perhaps? I don’t know where you get it going and then churches can carry on sort of thing.

Yeah, we have that. We’ve done a lot of work to try. Even areas where we don’t, we’re trying to encourage churches just beyond our reach where we could provide people with resources and a bit of training to get them started.

[6:32] And certainly the churches we partner with, we’re always encouraging them to think, what more could they be doing with local schools beyond what Crossteach are doing. We’ve got the door open and we’ve got a foot in where they’re doing some things, but what more could they be doing to build on that?

So the – I don’t know whether it’s more than three, but there’s RE-style lessons, there’s assemblies and then there’s Christian clubs. Are they the main kind of main areas?

They’re the main things. We then also would have a fourth strand that we call experiences, but particularly around festivals: Christmas and Easter time.

Okay, right.

And they’re just slightly different generally. They’re more interactive. They’ll be done in kind of a format with zones, people dressing up a little bit more. Often a church would host that as well, so it feels different.

[7:29] But around Christmas, some schools still would do a carol service or Christmas service in a local church, and we would be part of that in partnership with the church.

Okay. Now, just to drill back on those other three – RE lessons. What opportunities are there for those? Or maybe it’s got another term for it. I don’t know. But are there real opportunities in many schools for that?

Pretty much every school. There are ways schools can opt out of some of these things [that they are] generally are required to do. But the vast majority of schools, there’s a requirement for them to be teaching RE.

Right.

Or they might call it RS or philosophy, but that kind of topic. And the requirements are that that should always include Christianity, so

[8:19] almost 100% of schools should be teaching Christianity at some point to all their pupils, so there’s a vast amount of opportunity there for us to say to schools – we can add something, we can supplement, enhance some of what you’re doing. Not replace all of what they’re doing – but one lesson within a topic. Particularly, we make – I mean – and just adding that something as

[8:46] committed Christians trying to live this out: what difference does it make? We add that personal element as well as the delivering the curriculum.

Yeah, that sounds really good.

Things like – you know, if you’re a non-Christian teacher and people start asking you questions, that can be difficult because you’re not quite sure how to answer. You can deliver what’s in the textbook or the curriculum but once the questions go beyond that… so those are the kind of things we add for a school.

Yeah. And the clubs – I was chatting with someone about the Christian clubs yesterday – as in the kind of lunchtime clubs or end of the day clubs. What you might call Christian Unions or Christian clubs of some sort.

[9:28] We were just saying that there’s a challenge to do with those that, on the one hand they’re quite good for nurturing the Christians and showing them – or the church-based kids anyway, whether they’re Christians or not – the God-fearing kids – it is quite good. But on the other hand, it becomes… it’s a bit exclusive, or it’s a bit – it’s not cool, necessarily, to go to those clubs. Do you find that at all?

Well, we tend not to call them Christian clubs or Christian Unions and we explicitly say they are for anyone and everyone who would like to come along and find out more about what Christians believe. Or, if you’re already a Christian, to be encouraged in that. So although therefore – anyone, everyone – we would always open the Bible, we’d always look at some aspects of christian teaching and try and do that in a way where we can discuss that and they can think about it for themselves. So we intentionally present them as a inclusive – anyone can come – that doesn’t make them any cooler than they would otherwise be. Yeah, and there are still a lot of young people who are Christians who –

[10:38] for multiple reasons – don’t always attend. It may clash with other things they want to commit to. Or, yeah, that fear of being known as a Christian can be there as well.

Yeah, we have that in our locality as well. This was part of the discussion. We have – our church will be probably typical of many where there are some young people who are baptised. There’s quite a lot who are certainly God fearing and probably believe. But just, yeah, some of them – through sports or other interests they have – some of them through… they would say they’re a Christian to their friends, but they don’t want to make too big a thing of it, make it too public.

[11:15] And it’s really hard as an adult, I think, from the outside where you think this is easy. You know, compared to what you’re gonna have to experience in the rest of your life. This is pretty, pretty easy. But it is hard to give them that kind of mindset. I don’t know if you found

[11:30] any helpful ways of trying to encourage young people in that?

Mostly that would have to be, I think, through churches, parents, youth workers who are seeing them more often. I mean, we’d want them to encourage them to be a little bit more confident about their faith, a little more maybe even mission minded. So we say there are those who come, but at the other end, there are those who love coming and will invite their non-Christian friends as a place where they’ll be able to come and ask their questions. And one group we’ve met with recently, who’ve been meeting after school once a week, and now want to do –

[12:08] well, we haven’t actually decided what we’ll do – but they want to do some events, some activities where they can actually go out into the school community, let them know who they are, let them know what they believe and invite them to come along again and have their questions answered, find out more about it. So there are those who are reluctant but there are those who are really active and really keen to witness to their friends, so yeah, the more we can encourage to be like that the better.Sometimes it is numbers, to be honest. If you feel like you’re the only one, or there’s only two of you, it’s hard. So the group who are talking about activities, there’s 15 to 20 of them. You’ve got the security there in numbers, so sometimes it’s a numbers thing as well.

[12:53] Yeah again, that would be similar to our experience locally actually. There’s one school where there’s there is a club of about 25 and there’s one that’s got about eight in it. And the eight one is just a bit creaky and it’s hard to to move that on. And there are logistical reasons why it doesn’t work very well as well but it’s probably got the same number of Christians in the school, that’s the thing. And it’s a bigger school, so it probably has more Christians in fact, so it could in theory be bigger if you just took a very simple statistical kind of basis but it’s not. A question popped in my head and then went out again, but what are the barriers to uh the work that you do?

I think it’s really interesting because when we – obviously we do lots of church presentations, that kind of thing. I think most Christians we meet assume that our biggest barrier actually is the attitude that schools would have to us as Christians wanting to go in.

[13:45] The vast majority of schools are very warm, very welcoming, very appreciative of what we do and what we add to the school life. The greatest barriers to doing what we do are resources – having enough money to – our costs go up every year, so constantly having to raise more each year. And I would love to see high quality Christian schools work in every school in the country. We’re currently operating in four parts of the country, so that’s a long way from where we are. There are others doing it as well, so we’re not, it isn’t Crossteach who wants to take over the world, but there are gaps. That requires resources of money, partner churches who get the vision, and also people who are suitably qualified and skilled and experienced to join the team.

[14:38] The two things that cause us most challenge and the thing we have to confront most often is fundraising and recruitment. So that’s much more of a barrier than schools being hostile.

[14:53] How do you raise funds for Crossteach? I would imagine like most Christian charities, multiple ways.

So the main one where we raise up individual new support is through church presentations and groups, prayer meetings, that kind of activity, just sharing about the work, what we do, partnerships with churches. And so some of those churches would then add to their mission fund, whatever they call that, would donate to our work. And there are some trust funds who would support the kind of work we do where we would have relationships with them. Either an ongoing basis or sometimes it’s for particular one-off projects, that kind of thing.

[15:35] If you were talking to a church, church leadership, what would you tell them was the strategic value? I know that sounds very businessy, but the gospel strategic value, how does it help the gospel, the work that you do?

[15:51] I think we need churches to see that we have a mission to reach young people with the gospel.

[15:59] Obviously, the Great Commission includes everyone. So a subset of that is young people. Hopefully, they’re pretty straightforward. And we walk quite a fine line. So yes, we see our work as part of that mission, but there are restraints around what we can do within an educational, secular educational establishment.

[16:19] So we would explain, as we are really that first line of presenting the Christian faith, giving young people opportunities to come and ask questions and find out more. But then if they want to go beyond that, they’ve really got to connect with the church. We’re not there proselytising, discipling, those kinds of things. There’s a limit to our work. So our work is very much the first contact work. We are on the front line in schools where probably 97% or more of those young people have no contact with the church. So if we’re not there, how else are they going to meet Christians? How else are they going to have that first point of contact? We would then hope a church would work with us so that any young people who want to go further, want to find out more, want to connect with the Christian community – we’ve got those partnerships ready to send them on to and direct them to and connect with, so we’re the front line but it’s got to be

[17:12] in partnership with church because we are limited in how far we can go.

Yeah, that’s really interesting. I mentioned this recent discussion about schools where it it came off the back of – there’s a there’s a book I’ve written, it’s over my left shoulder, and it’s called Reasoning in the Public Square and we were talking about this book with some some people in our church and there’s a discussion question at the end of each chapter. And the first chapter has this question: where is your marketplace? And this person said, ‘Well, I think schools are a major kind of parallel with the marketplace that Paul goes to.’

[17:51] Because I explained in the book that it’s a place where people meet, where people, in the case of the marketplace, trade happens, but also ideas are exchanged and culture is formed in a way in the marketplace. Marketplace and cultural ideas, more than necessarily high-faluting ideas, but just opinions are shared and so on. And this person said, ‘Oh, schools work is like a key marketplace. You know, if you want to reach lots of people who are at a point of exchanging ideas and where you’ve got a kind of mix-up of people, equivalent to more like

[18:27] a marketplace, schools are the place.’ So I got quite enthusiastic about it in preparation for this discussion today thinking, yeah, that this is an analogue of the marketplace for Paul. So I don’t know if that resonates but it worked in my head because I thought, oh yeah, that’s a very good point. Where else do large groups of people gather as adults? There’s nowhere really. Whereas in a school you’ve got thousands of people, often, all sort of gathering – this great melting pot.

Yeah – well, and adults do, but it’s in the workplace, which is there for a particular function, like you said. In schools, you are educating, you’re presenting different ideas, you’re encouraging young people to wrestle with those.

[19:05] And all the evidence is most people make faith decisions before they’re 18. The vast majority of Christians will have made a faith decision. So it is a critical point in people’s lives when they’re forming, like I said, this culture, this ideas, impressions they’ve got about religion, that’s a time when they’re making those key decisions.

Yeah. I mean, and workplace obviously is a massive opportunity and, you know, the book and lots of other initiatives are encouraging finding other marketplaces and so forth. But schools are quite unusual in terms of the quantity of people thrown together, because in a workplace, you often don’t have, you know, classes of 30 people or mixing, that much mixing going on. You may have colleagues around you, you may actually be a bit more isolated now, since covid, because you’re doing a bit of working at home as well as in an office and when you go in the office, it’s all a bit transitory. So school is the place where where relationships are formed as well as ideas being formed. There’s lots of relationships going on at schools which can be profitable for the gospel. You probably know more people when you’re at school than at any other time in your life.

[20:16] And yeah, I mean, it’s interesting. My daughter has friends from primary and secondary school and sixth form college that she still connects with. Most of those not Christians, but she still has a contact with them. So and she is, I believe, my daughter. So it has value and may have longer term value, maybe fruit in the long term for that. Just a few comments on the sort of state of the culture in schools. I mean, as you say, people say it it must be terrible and hostile and you’re saying, ‘Well, that’s not the main barrier.’ But has there been a change in the 15 years in terms of the culture in schools, with respect to Christianity or their views of Christianity?

I would say not from the… so there’s two parts on this. So obviously the school staff – the adults, the leadership – there are still these requirements for things they have to do. And we still are providing a service where we help them do that hopefully better than they would otherwise do so yes they may not be overly enthusiastic about what we’re saying and what we believe but they recognise, that we’re we’re adding value to what they they have to do yeah so still a a, willingness to invite us in, obviously, as long as we’re doing it well, doing it professionally, all those kind of things.

[21:41] Particularly RE staff we work with are very enthusiastic and very warm about our work, even though those who are not Christians, they see the value of it. So I don’t think that’s changed a great deal, if I’m honest, over 15 years. I would say amongst the young people, when I first started, the vast majority, when you’re in front of 30 teenagers trying to tell them something about Jesus,

[22:02] most of them would have been indifferent. Difference yes um as in that’s fine i’m not a christian so why do i need to even know this stuff yeah um i think the majority is still there but there’s a growing minority who are more hostile yes to what we believe as christians and the values we have yeah and particularly not surprisingly i would say around relationships sexuality um when if we’re asked to teach about marriage about relationships we are prepared for that to be a more difficult series of lessons yes yeah i think that reflects what’s happening in wider society um yeah yeah people people kind of plot and and you can put different time periods on it but plot a move from well christendom but But more recently, a move from basically Christians being viewed favorably.

[22:58] So basically, we think what they do is good. And we might not believe it, but we think basically they’re morally good through to indifference, through to hostility. And people put different time periods on that. But yeah, what you’re seeing in schools, I think, reflects what Christians or sociologists observe in wider society. Um how do you how do you deal with that hostility could you say you know we’re prepared for that, is it a is it an intellectual argument you think or is it an emotional argument or is it an avoidance argument um if you know what i mean that you that you it’s a mix of things so one thing we’ve really had to do is uh work much more closely with the schools, to ensure they’re aware of what we’re going to teach and they’re comfortable with dance so that they, If people go and complain to their parents, for example, and the parents then phone to school, the school can defend what’s been done.

[24:03] So there’s that side of it. We want to make sure the school are happy with what we’re doing. Therefore, they will stand by us and fight our corner if necessary. But in terms of going into the classroom, we’ve gone through a process. I think we’ve become much better at teaching what we’re for rather than getting into arguments about what we’re against. Yeah and talk so for example talking about uh the christian view of marriage one man one woman for life yeah as being a fantastic beautiful gift of god and and being the best you could have uh whilst acknowledging you know in lots of areas of life we don’t always get the best but that’s that’s if god has designed it that way that must be the best way and therefore we’re for that rather than coming from we’re against anything for the sake of it we’re for something yeah um and then as a team we just do a lot of work on what kind of questions to anticipate how might we answer them well but also uh getting better asking questions back before we give an answer because often the the intent the motive behind the questions varies wildly so trying to understand.

[25:15] Is a young person asking me about same-sex marriage as an example because they are genuinely interested yeah because they’re trying to work out for themselves well they oh this is different what i’ve heard for what do i how does that inform what i’m thinking or are they just trying to point out that we’re the bad guys and we’re against it so there’s a bit of work to what is your motive here therefore how am i going to respond to you before i jump into the response, yeah I think in combination of those things, still we still do get some hostility, Hmm. Yeah. And in a way, there’s nothing you can do about it if you’ve tried to say it winsomely and kindly.

[26:00] Yeah, can’t be responsible entirely for people’s response. But I think it is really difficult for us more broadly as Christians to be heard and not to be lost in a kind of a noise of hatred, either hatred against us or a feeling that we are being hateful um ourselves and i think finding ways to be uncompromising but to be kind um is is a challenge for us uh and i think just boldly stating um our views doesn’t really help um because people who are listening to us have a whole different kind of worldview um so that they’re not dealing in the same sort of categories either truth categories or authority categories or right and wrong moral categories as we are. So it’s finding ways of expressing that we are seeking to be morally good and that we are sensitive and understanding about people with different views. But I think you’re absolutely right in talking about the good.

[27:03] I became a Christian when I was a late teenager, really, um although i had a christian upbringing and i i think probably as an older teenager and going into marriage i i knew the bible’s teaching on on uh marriage and sexuality and particularly i guess in my case as a heterosexual person um.

[27:22] On um sex outside marriage but i i think i probably thought it was just what god wanted whereas i think it was it was quite a lot later in life when i thought it was good if you know what i mean by the difference because you can you can be really clear and i think sometimes teenagers can be really clear they understand what the bible’s teaching is um you know that the marriage is between a man and woman and sex is to be the context marriage you know most of them by by the time they’re actually going into secondary school if they’re from christian homes know that as a as a as a piece of bible teaching i think what takes a bit longer for them to learn and we need to try and put it across as you say is that it’s actually really good there there are so many goodnesses to that um it’s not just an arbitrary rule that you know god’s decided well i’m gonna i’m gonna restrict that to this area even though you could experience it in all these other you know aspects of your life but but actually we’re just going to have it over here um whereas it’s it’s good from from many points of view um to do with the individual but also to do with families and to do with society um so yeah I really support getting that across as well. Right.

[28:34] Yeah. That’s also worth saying. I think if it gets…

[28:38] It doesn’t get confrontational very often anymore, but when it does, it’s kind of reminding the young people that we’re there to teach them about what Christians believe. If we’re challenging their thinking, that’s one thing, but we’re not there to change their thinking necessarily.

[28:56] And they will learn about other views about these things from other people as well. So the school haven’t invited us in to force a view on them or to change their minds about anything. We’re there to teach what Christians believe, why we believe it, how that impacts how we live we’re not a political organization we’re an educational organization so.

[29:14] Usually that’s enough to say okay i can understand you’re just telling what you believe you’re not yeah although they might feel challenged in what they believe we’re not there to force them to change their mind no no and i often um try and get across to people uh who who might kind of interview me for various reasons about the fact that there’s no such thing as a neutral rule um so it’s not as though you can say well you know christians shouldn’t go in and teach that you know children should make up their mind themselves or something or you know no one should force religion on them and you say well there’s no such thing as a neutral bit of teaching where you don’t teach anything because by teaching nothing you’re teaching that there’s nothing else to learn so you’re actually even making a statement by saying there’s no such thing as faith or you know there’s no there’s no such thing of faith you should be interested in that is a teaching in and of itself so that’s an opinion or forcing on people um so that idea that secularists and you know the humanist society sometimes kind of put forward about you know we just want a neutral thing you know it’s okay that people have faith and they sort of give us a little pat on the head you know to say it’s okay for you to exist but you can’t try and explain to other people and and you know i try and say but by not doing that you are actually forcing on people a non-christian view um and a whole kind of moral framework that’s uh that’s related to that so i think it’s good It’s sometimes to remind people of that.

[30:29] Yeah, well, I think we’re seeing the view from some that we shouldn’t bring our faith into our post. What else is going to inform your views about these things if your faith doesn’t come into it? Well, no, yeah. I mean, you’ve got to bring your morality into it and then you’ve got to root your morality in something. Of course, as Christians, we know that there isn’t actually really any moral basis without the authority of God, but people at least got to join up in some way um and uh you know having an opinion that christianity is bad is a moral view um you know which which is an authority claim that we can question and hold up to the light um how can people find out more about cross teach if they’re listening and they’re just getting to near the end of this podcast and thinking where can i find out more yeah yeah uh well we’ve got a website um, it’s currently being redeveloped but there is one there with information about the things we do how you can contact us, that kind of thing. If you’re in one of the areas where we work, so we’re in Kent in the Tunbridge Wells area particularly, Warwickshire around Leamington and Warwick, Nottingham and London, which is obviously massive. So a team that currently covers Camden and Islington area, but also Tower Hamlets over in the east of London as well. So if you’re in one of those areas, I would really encourage you to contact the team, which you can do through the website. They’d love to come to your church or meet up with you and share more about what we do. And wherever you are, you’d be interested in doing church delegation work?

[31:58] Um, we, part of our redevelopment is on our website to have a library of online resources. So even people beyond those four areas can contact us and we would do whatever we can to support them in schools work, whether that’s resources, uh, advice, potentially training, which we’ve done in the past for churches. Yep.

[32:17] So we want to see people in schools talking about the Christian faith and we’ll do all we can to make that happen. I was going to say it’s crossteach.org. Dot com. Dot com. We’ll probably get you there as well, to be honest, but .com is the main one. CrossTeach.com. Yeah. Okay. www.crossteach.com. Yeah. I don’t know why I’ve got CrossTeach.org in my head. I should have researched that. I think we probably have all those domains, so probably we’ll get you there, but .com is the one we use. Brilliant. Okay. Well, anything else you want to particularly mention that needs to be put across?

[32:51] I suppose back to that question, why schools work. I think there’s a lot of conversation that has been for years and amongst church leaders about the lack of young people in our churches. Yeah. And the ongoing decline of young people, the numbers, even those who are already there, a portion of those are leaving.

[33:09] Just to encourage people to think about schools as a place where they can connect with young people.

[33:14] You want to do that sensibly, do it well, but that can be that first contact that might draw those young people then to your church to find out more. So if you’re not doing school, if you’re in a church in a local area with schools and you’re not doing schools work, give it some serious thoughts. Yeah, that’s brilliant. Brilliant note to end on. Wayne, thank you very much. Brilliant. Good to see you, Graham. Thanks for the time.

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