Football, Fighting and Family

 Our new Youth Worker, Lawrence Bettany, was already running a weekly football night down at our local high school, before he became part of our staff team.

Now up to 25 people turn up to this, some volunteers and fitness freaks from our church, but mostly mid- to late-teens and a few young adults we know from the neighbourhood.

And after several months of matches, training and arguing over who owes their subs (each young person has to pay towards the costs of pitch hire and equipment) the guys have now had 2 matches (the first one a loss we few weeks ago, the second was a win on Monday) against a sister project in Hattersley.

Part of the struggle of youth - especially for young lads - is wrestling with the rules of engagement - fighting with "the system" - whether that's school, parents, police, any authority figures. And our lads are no exception.

But this Monday night I went to cheer them on and it was great to see them working together, encouraging each other for goals or good defending, and working towards a common goal (in this case beating Hattersley 5-2).

Football is like family, because in both there is always a bit of arguing. But what we really want to help build in East Manchester - something that is lost across many parts of Britain - is a sense of extended family, where even when we argue we do it well and then get on with each other after we've all said our piece.

In the first part of the Bible Moses brought down the 10 Commandments from Mount Sinai. However when Jesus of Nazareth emerged in 1st Century Palestine, he summed the 10 up with 2 simple but deeply challenging commands:
(1) Love God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength, and
(2) Love your neighbour as yourself.

And as our faith in Jesus grows we want to love others and call them on to do the same with those they know, those they struggle with, even hate.

Well done, Lawrence and well done our lads.