Hello Martha!
Hello! My name is Martha and I have just joined the Onelife team in a new role – Youth Worker Training and Development Manager.
I am so excited to be joining the team, and these first few weeks have been a joy being welcomed into this family. I’m so inspired by Onelife’s vision to see young people empowered and equipped in leadership.
To tell you how I got here, I must take you back to the middle of nowhere in Cambodia in February 2013. I was coming to the end of my time as a missionary and I was a part of a team helping renovate a school. Surprisingly, we ended up doing some youth ministry. As I was speaking to these young people in a field in Cambodia, I felt God tell me that this – youth ministry – was what he had created me to do. It was my calling. After we finished working on the school, I came back to the ship I was living on, and furiously searched ‘Christian youth work London‘ on Google. Due to the ship’s poor internet and the fact I had no idea what I was looking for, I didn’t get very far.
I came back to the UK after more than two years away in October 2013, and on my first Sunday back home I spoke in my church about my time away. At the end of the service the new pastor of the church told me that they had been praying about appointing a youth minster and he would like me to consider it. The rest, as they say, is history.
The past ten years have taken me across denominations and churches. In 2017 I completed a degree in Youth Ministry and Theology at St Mellitus College, and I have been consistently blown away by how God is moving in the lives of the young people of this country. I have always had a desire to make the youth ministries I oversee as a place where young people can step into whatever God is calling them to – whether that is leading, teaching, hospitality, or anything else.
I have seen first hand what happens when we allow young people to take the lead, and it has changed churches and communities I have been a part of for the better.
I first encountered Onelife through their support for me as a youth pastor – through coffees and walks, coming alongside me and helping me process different things about my role, and later through the Onelife Certificate. As a youth pastor I was blown away by the culture and content Onelife bring into the youth ministry space. It helped me so much firstly as a Christian and person, and then in my work with young people. It was truly transformational to my ministry, and it was a privilege to have them come alongside me. The Certificate specially changed so much of my youth ministry practice for the better and the subsequent transformation in the young people I worked with was tangible.
As I step into this new role, I am excited to be able to offer that same support to many other youth workers, helping and supporting them to build youth ministries where young people are raised up to be leaders in every sphere of society. It has been an amazing privilege to hear about how faithful God has been in enabling the team over the years to support youth workers like me, and I am so expectant about where God is going to take us moving forward.
