Sorted: Nano - Weird and Wonderful

There’s something wonderful, and weird, about watching more than 400 11-14-year-olds sit in a church and sing about Christ.

Weird, because this isn’t meant to happen anymore. The statistics about 11-14s leaving the church are startling, and depressing. More are leaving than ever before. That matters because they are part of the church of today, as well as the church of tomorrow. Yet here were hundreds of them—normal, fashionably-dressed tweens and teens—at Sorted:Nano, a morning event held at St Helen’s Bishopsgate in central London.

And so it was wonderful, too. I’d taken three guys from our church’s 11-14 group. It was their first time there. They’re part of a group of four on Sunday mornings; every Monday to Friday, they head off to schools where they are in a tiny minority. Here, they could see they are part of something bigger than themselves; that they’re not alone.

They could soak up some great Bible teaching from Isaiah 53, in two short talks (one of our 11-year-old guys said of it: “I liked it—it was interesting and I understood it”); they could sing with hundreds of others, backed by a band (including every teenage boy’s must-have for Christian singing, a good drummer); they could enjoy having fun together.

There were more young people there this year than at any previous Sorted:Nano (so-called because “Sorted” is an event for 14-18s, held each November). If you live within a couple of hours of central London, and are involved in 11-14s ministry (and particularly if your group is fairly small, like mine), I’d really encourage you to make sure your group is there next year, making the numbers even larger, making the encouragements even more wonderful.

If you live nowhere near London, why not see if you can gather a group of youthworkers together, and plan a similar event. For 11-14s used to youthgroups of 5 to 10, even getting 50 of them in a room together is hugely encouraging.